
Pass Clh/l\3 
Book . C ;-: :::. 




THE 



Childhood of the World ; 



'E Simple Ictnunt 



MAN IN EARLY TIMES. 



EDWARD CLODD, F.R.A.S. 



"As a child that cries. 
But, crying, knows his father near.''^ — In Memoriam. 



NEW YORK: 

R. WOETHINGTON, 770 BROADWAY. 

1881 






^ .o\ :b .TYiLu^ 



TROWS 

PRINTING AND BOOKDINDING COMPAKy, 

NEW YORK. 



PREFACE. 



For the information of parents and others 
into whose hands this book may fall, it may be 
stated that it is an attempt, in the absence of 
any kindred elernentary work, to narrate, in as 
simple language as the subject will permit, the 
story of man's progress from the unknown time 
of his early appearance upon the earth, to the 
period from which writers of history ordinarily 
begin. 

That an acquaintance with the primitive 
condition of man should precede the study of 
any single department of his later history is 
obvious ; but it must be remembered that such 
knowledge has become attainable only within 
the last few years, and at present enters but 
little, if at all, into the course of study at 
schools. 

8 



4 PREFACE. 

Thanks to the patient and careful researches 
of men of science, the way is rapidly becoming 
clearer for tracing the steps by which, at ever- 
varying rates of progress, different races have 
advanced from savagery to civilization, and for 
thus giving a completeness to the history of 
mankind which the assumptions of an arbitrary 
chronology would render impossible. 

As the Table of Contents indicates, the First 
Part of this book describes the progress of man 
in material things, while the Second Part seeks 
to explain his mode of advance from lower to 
higher stages of religious belief 

Although this work is written for the young, 
I venture to hope that it will afford to older 
persons who will accept the simplicity of its 
style, interesting information concerning primi- 
tive man. 

In thinking it undesirable to encumber the 
pages of a work of this class with foot-notes 
and references, I have been at some pains to 
verify the statements made, the larger body of 
which may be found in the works of Tylor, 
Lubbock, Nilsson, Waitz, and other ethnolo- 



PREFACE. 5 

gists, to whom my obligations are cordially 
expressed. 

I am fully conscious how slenderly each 
department of human progress has been dealt 
with in this work ; but, in seeking to compass a 
great subject within a small space, it has been 
my anxiety to break the continuity of the story 
as little as possible. 

E. C. 

133 Brecknock Road, London, 
December, 1872. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

SECT. PAGB 

I. Introductory ....'. . . ii 

II. Man's First Wants 20 

III. Man's First Tools 23 

IV. Fire 28 

V. Cooking and Pottery. 29 

VI. Dwellings 30 

VII. Use of Metals 33 

VIII. Man's Great Age on the Earth ... 38 
IX. Mankind as Shepherds, Farmers, and 

Traders 42 

X. Language 47 

XL WRITING;. ........ 53 



CONTENTS. 



SECT. 

XII. Counting 



PAGH 

55 



XIII. Man's Wanderings from his First Home . 57 

XIV. Man's Progress in all Things ... 60 
XV. Decay of Peoples 62 



PART II. 



XVI. Introductory 

XVII. Man's First Questions . 

XVIII. Myths 

XIX. Myths about Sun and Moon 
XX. Myths about Eclipses . 
XXI. Myths about Stars .... 
XXII. Myths about the Earth and Man 

XXIII. Man's Ideas about the Soul 

XXIV. Belief in Magic and Witchcraft 
XXV. Man's Awe of the Unknown 

XXVI. Fetish-Worship .... 

XXVII. Idolatry ...... 



66 
68 
71 
73 
75 
76 

79 
81 

8S 
87 
S9 
92 



CONTENTS. g 

SECT. PAGE 

XXVIII. Nature-Worship . . . . . .93 

1, Water-Worship 94 

2. Tree- Worship . . . . .95 
4. Animal- Worship 96 

XXIX. Polytheism, or Belief in Many Gods . 97 

XXX. Dualism, or Belief in Two Gods . . 102 

XXXI. Prayer 105 

XXXII. Sacrifice 106 

XXXIII. Monotheism, or Belief in One God . . 108 

XXXIV. Three Stories about Abraham . . . 114 
XXXV. Man's Belief in a Future Life . . .118 

XXXVI. Sacred Books 122 

XXXVII. Conclusion 126 



THE 

CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 



PART I. 
I. Introductory, 



Every thing in this wide world has a history ; 
that is, it has something to tell or something to 
be found out about what it was, and how it has 
come to be what it is. 

Even of the small stones lying in the road- 
way or about the garden, clever men have, after 
a great deal of painstaking, found out a history 
more wonderful than all the fairy stories you 
have been told ; and if this be true, as true it 
is, of dead stones and many other things which 
cannot speak, you may believe that a history 

11 



12 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

Stranger still can be written about some living 
things. 

And it is the history of the most wonderful 
living thing that this world has ever seen that 
I want to tell you. You will perhaps think 
that I am about to describe to you some curly- 
haired, big-tusked, fierce-looking monster that 
lived on the earth thousands of years ago ; foi 
children (and some grown-up people too) are 
apt to think that things are wonderful only 
when they are big, which is not true. To show 
you what I mean : the beautiful six-sided wax 
cells which the bee makes are more curious 
than the rough hut which the chimpanzee (an 
African monkey) piles together ; and the tiny 
ants that keep plant-lice and milk them, just as 
we keep cows to give us milk, and that catch 
the young of other ants to make slaves of them, 
are more wonderful than the huge and dull 
rhinoceros. 

Well, it is about yourself that I am going to 
talk ; for I want you to learn, as far as we are 
able to find out, how it is that you are what you 
are, and zvhere you are. Remember, I do not 



Sect, i.] OF THE WORLD. 13 

say how you are, or why you are : for God alone 
knows that ; and he has told the secret to no 
one here, although, may be, he will tell it us one 
day elsewhere. 

Perhaps you have thought that there is noth- 
ing very wonderful in being where you are, or 
in possessing the good things which you enjoy ; 
that people have always had them, or, if not, 
that they have only to buy them at the shops ; 
and that from the first day man lived on the 
earth he could cook his food, and have ices and 
dessert after it ; could dress himself well, write 
a good hand, live in a fine house, and build 
splendid churches with stained-glass windows, 
just as he does now-a-days. 

If you have thought so, you are wrong ; and I 
wish to set you right, and show you that man 
was once wild and rough and savage, frightened 
at his own shadow, and still more frightened at 
the roar of thunder and the quiver of lightning, 
which he thought were the clapping of the 
wings and the flashing of the eyes of the angry 
Spirit, as he came flying from the sun ; and 
that it has taker many thousands of years for 



14 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

man to become as wise and skilful as we now 
see him to be. 

For just as you had to learn your A, B, C, 
to enable you to read at all ; and just as you are 
learning things day by day which will help you 
to be useful when you grow up, and are called 
upon to do your share of work in this world, 
where all idleness is sin, — so man had to begin 
learning, and to get at facts, step by step, along 
a toilsome road. 

And instead of being told, as we are told, why 
a certain thing is done, and which is the best 
way to do it, he had to find out these things 
for himself by making use of the brains God 
had given him ; and had often to do the same 
thing over and over again, as you have some- 
times with a hard spelling-lesson, before he was 
able to do it well. 

Now, there are several reasons for the belief 
that man was once wild and naked, and that 
only by slow degrees did he become clothed 
and civilized. For instance, there have been 
found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, 
but especially in Europe, thousands of tool? 



Sect, i.] OF THE WORLD. 15 

and weapons which were shaped and used by 
men ages upon ages ago, and which are just 
like the tools and weapons used by savages Hv- 
ing now-a-days in various parts of the earth, 
and among whom no traces of a civilized past 
can be found. 

Far across the wind-tossed seas, far away in 
such places as Australia, Borneo, and Ceylon, — 
islands which you must learn to find out on a 
map of the world or on a globe, — there live at 
this day creatures so wild, that, if you saw them, 
you would scarcely believe that they were 
human beings, and not wild animals in the 
shape of men, covering themselves with mud, 
feeding on roots, and living in wretched huts, 
or in woods under the shelter of trees. The 
word " savage " means one who lives in the 
woods. 

In telling you how the earliest men lived, I 
shall want you to go back with me a great many 
years, even before the histories of different 
countries begin ; for men had to learn a great 
deal before they were clever enough to write 
histories of themselves, and live together as we 



1 6 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i 

English people do, making a nation. Many, 
many centuries — and a century is a hundred 
years — passed away before they left any trace 
behind to tell us that they lived, other than the 
tools I am about to describe, or broken pottery 
and scratchings on bones. 

Yes : I shall take you past, not only the Con- 
quest, but past the day when, in England, — 
then called Britain, — the wild people dwelt in 
mud-huts, lived on fruits and the flesh of wild 
animals, stained their bodies with the blue juice 
of the woad-plant, and worshipped trees and 
the sun and moon, even to the day when no 
sea flowed between England and France, when 
there was no German Ocean and no English 
Channel ! 

For you must take now on trust what by and 
by you will be able to prove the truth of for 
yourself, — when you learn lessons from the rocks 
and hills themselves, instead of from books 
about them, — that this world is, like the other 
worlds floating with it in the great star-filled 
spaces, very, very old, and ever-changing, — so 
old that men make all sorts of guesses about 



Sect, i.] OF THE WORLD. ij. 

its birthday ; and that, unlike us who become 
wrinkled and gray, this dear old world keeps 
ever fresh and ever beautiful, brightened by 
the smiling sunlight of God playing over its 
face. 

Now, it would be making another guess — 
and, as we shall never know whether we have 
guessed right, what is the use of guessing } — 
to say how many years man has lived here. 
It is enough for us to know — and this is no 
guess — that the good Being who made the 
world put man on it at the best and fittest 
time ; and that he makes nothing in vain, 
whether it be rock, tree, flower, fish, bird, beast, 
or man. 

But although God left man to find out very 
much for himself, he gave him the tools where- 
with to work. Eyes wherewith to see, ears 
wherewith to hear, feet wherewith to walk, 
hands wherewith to handle, — these were given 
for the use of the man himself, by which I 
mean the mind, soul, or spirit, which is man. 
Perhaps we may best call it the thinking part, 
because the word " man " comes from a very old 



i8 THE CHILDHOOD [Part l 

word, which means to think; therefore a man 
is oite who thinks. When names were given to 
things, some word was fixed upon which best 
described the thing. " Brute " comes from a 
word meaning raw or rough; and so man is 
distinguished from the brutes, which are in 
some things hke him, and from the plants and 
trees, which are Hke him in that they breathe, 
by being known as the thinking being. 

If I sometimes break off my story to explain 
the meaning of certain words, you will one day 
learn to thank me for it ; because, as you have 
already seen, there is a reason, and sometimes 
a very beautiful reason, for the names which 
things bear: and it is not less strange than 
true, that words often tell us more of the man- 
ners and doings of people, who, silent now, used 
to speak them, than we can find out from the 
remains they have left behiiid them. 

In one case, the words they used to speak 
are the only clew we have to the fact that a 
people who were our forefathers once lived in 
Asia. They have left no traces (so far as we 
can find out) of the tools v/hich they used, of 



Sect, i.] OF THE WORLD. 15 

the houses they Hved in, or of writings on rocks 
or bricks ; and yet we know that they must have 
been, because the words they spoke have come 
down to us, and are really used by us in dif- 
ferent forms and with different meanings, of 
which I will give you a proof. 

You know that the girls in a family are called 
the " daughters." That word comes from a 
word very much like it, by which these people 
of old — the Aryans, as we have named them — 
called their girls, and which means a milking- 
maid. Now, we know by this that they had got 
beyond the savage state, and that they must 
have kept goats and cows for the milk which 
they gave. Thus much a simple word tells us. 
In the same way, if the English people had died 
off the face of the earth, and left no records 
behind them other than remains of the words 
they uttered, we should know that English girls 
had learned to spin, because, in course of time, 
unmarried women were called spinsters. 



THE CHILDHOOD [Part l 



II. Man's First Wants. 

I have now to tell you that the first men 
were placed here wild and naked, knowing 
nothing of the great riches stored up in the 
earth beneath them, and only after a long time 
making it yellow with the waving corn, and 
digging out of it the iron and other metals so 
useful to mankind. 

The first thought of man was about the wants 
of his body : his first desire was to get food 
to eat, fire for warmth, and some place for 
shelter when night came on, and wild beasts 
howled and roared around him. 

See how, in the first step he had to take, 
man is unlike the brute. 

Wherever God has placed the brute, he has 
given it the covering best fitted for the place 
in which it lives, and has supplied its proper 
food close at hand. But God has placed man 
here naked, and left him to seek for himself the 
food and clothing best suited to that part of the 
world in which he lives. If God had given man 



Sect, ii.] OF THE WORLD. z\ 

thick hair-covered skin, he could not have 
moved from place to place with comfort ; and 
so man is made naked, but given the power of 
reasoning about things, and acting by reason. 
The brute remains the brute he always was ; 
while man never stops, but improves upon what 
those who lived before him have done. 

Man has not the piercing eye of the eagle ; 
but he has the power of making instruments 
which not only bring into view stars whose 
light has taken a thousand years to reach the 
earth, but which also tell us what metals are 
in the sun and other stars ; man has not the 
swiftness of the deer, but he has the power of 
making steam-engines to carry him sixty miles 
in an hour ; man has not the strength of the 
horse, but he has put machines together which 
can do the work of a hundred horses. 

Whatever power man has, whether of body 
or of mind, improves by use. The savage, who 
has to make constant use of his bodily powers 
to secure food, is, by practice, fleeter of foot and 
quicker of sight than civilized man, who, using 
the power of his mind, excels the savage in 



22 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i, 

getting knowledge, and making good and also 
bad use of it. 

I have said that the first things man wanted 
were food, warmth, and shelter. 

Ages before he lived here, the streams of 
fresh water had run down the mountain sides 
and through the valleys they had helped to 
make ; and they were running still, never resting, 
so that man had little trouble in quenching his 
thirst; and would, of course, keep near the stream. 
But the food he needed was not to be had so 
easily. The first things he fed on would be 
wild fruits and berries ; and the first place he 
lived in would be under some tree or over- 
hanging rock, or in some cave. He might wish 
to eat of the fish that glided past him in the 
river, and of the reindeer that bounded past him 
into the depths of the forest ; but these were 
not to be had without weapons to slay them. 

There are few things which the wonderfully- 
made hand of man cannot do ; but it must have 
tools to work with. A man cannot cut wood 
or meat without a knife : he cannot write without 
a pen, or drive in nails without a hammer. 



Sect, hi.] OF THE WORLD. 23 



III, Man's First Tools. 

One of the first things which man needed 
was, therefore, some sharp-edged tool, wliicli 
must, of course, be harder than the thing he 
wanted to cut. He knew nothing of the metals, 
although some of them, not the hardest, lay 
near the surface ; and he therefore made use of 
the stones lying about. Men of science (that 
is, men who know, because "science" comes 
from a word meaning to know) have given the 
name " Age of Stone " to that far-off time when 
stone, and such things as bone, wood, and horn, 
were made into various kinds of tools. Flints 
were very much used ; because, by a hard blow, 
flakes like the blade of a knife could be broken 
off them. Other flints were shaped to a point, 
or into rough sorts of hammers, by chipping 
v/ith a rounded pebble, or other stone. Many 
of them are in form like an almond, having a 
cutting edge all round. Their sizes differ, some 
being six inches long and three inches wide,, 
while others are rather larg^er. 



24 THE CHILDHOOD [Part x. 

These oldest stone weapons, unsharpened by 
grinding and unpolished, have been chiefly 
found in places known as the " drift ; " that is, 
buried underneath the gravel and clay and 
stones which have been drifted or carried down 
by the rivers in their ceaseless flow. 

In these early days of man's history, huge 
wild animals shared Europe with him. There 
were mammoths, or woolly-haired elephants, 
rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses ; there were cave- 
lions, cave-bears, cave-hyaenas, and other beasts 
of a much larger size than are found in the 
world at this day. 

That they lived at the same time that man 
did is certain, because, under layers of earth, 
their bones have been found side by side with 
his, and with the weapons which he made. 

Year after year man learned to shape his tools 
and weapons better, until really well-formed 
spear-heads, daggers, hatchets, hammers, and 
other implements, were made ; and, at a far later 
date, he had learned the art of polishing them. 
Remember that first, in what is called the " Old 
Stone Age," men learned to chip stones, and 



Sect, in.] OF THE WORLD. 25 

afterwards, in what is called the " Newer Stone 
Age," to grind and polish them. 

The better-shaped tools and weapons have 
been chiefly found in caves ; which, as books 
about the earth will tell you, were hollowed out 
by water ages before any living thing dwelt 
here. These caves were used by men, not only 
to live in, but also to bury their dead in ; and, 
from the different remains found in and near 
them, it is thought that feasts were held when 
the burials took place, and that food and 
weapons were put with the dead, because their 
friends thought that such things were needed 
by them as they travelled the long journey to 
another world. I should tell you that but very 
few bones of primitive man have been found ; 
and this is not to be wondered at when we re- 
member how much more lasting is the work 
of man than are his remains, and also, that, from 
an early period, the burning of dead bodies was 
common. 

The great help to man of the weapons I have 
described to you against the attacks of the wild 
animals is easily understood ; for with them he 



26 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i, 

was able not only to defend himself and his 
family, but to kill the huge creatures, and thus 
get food for the mouths that were always increas- 
ing in number. That he did kill and eat them, 
and clothe himself in their skins, and make their 
jawbones into strong weapons, is certain. 

It is surprising to think how many things 
the first men had to do with the stones they 
roughly shaped. They cut down trees, and, 
perhaps with the aid of fire, scooped them out 
to make canoes, for it was plain to them that 
wood floated on the water ; they killed their 
food, cut it up, broke the bones to suck out the 
marrow ; cracked sea-shells to get out the fish 
inside them ; besides doing many other things 
with what seem to us blunt and clumsy tools. 

While we are talking about this Stone Age, I 
should tell you that there are found in different 
parts of the world stone ruins of very great age 
and various sizes, — some built of stone pillars, 
covered with a flat stone for roof; others built to 
a point, like the great pyramids of Egypt. 

These, like the caves, were used to bury the 
dead in ; but sometimes were built to mark the 



Sect. hi. J OF THE WORLD. 27 

place where some great deed was done, or where 
something very wonderful had happened. The 
piling together of stones was an easy and last- 
ing way of keeping such things fresh in men's 
minds, just as we erect statues in honor of our 
great men, or build something in memory of 
their acts of bravery, nobleness, or love. When 
built as tombs for the dead, their size depended 
upon the rank of the person to be laid within 
them. The circles of standing stones — like 
that of Stonehenge — are thought to have been 
built for worship of some kind. 

You have learned, then, that, during the time 
when weapons and tools of stone were made, 
men lived a wild, roaming life, eating roots, 
berries, and fruits, and, in a raw state, the flesh 
of such animals as they killed, and, sad to say, 
some of them eating the flesh of their fellow- 
man ; clothing themselves, little or much as they 
needed, in the skins of animals, which they 
sewed together with bone needles, using the 
sinews for thread. And now we have to speaU 
about the first mode of getting a fire. 



28 THE CHILDHOOD [Part k 



IV. Fire. 

There are a great many curious stories which 
profess to give an account of the way in which 
fire was first obtained ; but they are a part of 
that guess-work about things which is ever 
going on, and wliich brings us no nearer the 
truth. Men have ever been quick to make use 
of what we call their "wits " (which word comes 
from an old word used by our forefathers, mean- 
ing ujiderstanding), or their common-sense ; and 
common-sense taught them that fire was to be 
had by rubbing two pieces of wood together. 
In making their flint weapons, sparks would fly ; 
but they saw that the flints themselves could 
not be set on fire. When they felt cold, they 
rubbed their hands together, and warmth came 
to them. They tried what could be done by 
running a blunt-pointed stick along a groove of 
its own making in another piece of wood ; and 
they found, first that each got heated, then that 
sparks flew, then that flame burst out. 

Travellers tell us that savages can produce 



Sect, v.] OF THE WORLD. 2g 

fire in a few seconds in this way, and that, in the 
northern seas of Europe, the islanders find a 
bird so fat and greasy, that all they have to do 
is to draw a wick through its body, and, on 
lighting it, the bird burns away as a candle 
does ! 

And fire was as useful in the days I am 
writing about as travellers find it now, in giving 
protection from the wild beasts at night ; so 
that man had many reasons for keeping his 
fire always burning, by heaping on it the wood 
which was ready to his hand in such abundance. 

V. Cooking and Pottery. 

At first men ate flesh raw, as some northern 
tribes do now ; but afterwards they would learn 
to cook it ; and this they did by simply putting 
the meat direct to the fire. Afterwards they 
would dig a hole, and line it with the hard hide 
of the slain animal, fill it with water, put the 
meat in, and then make stones red-hot, dropping 
them in until the water was hot enough and the 
meat cooked. Then a still better way would be 



30 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i 

found out of boiling the food in vessels set over 
the fire, which were daubed outside with clay to 
prevent their being burnt. Thus men learned — 
seeing how hard fire made the clay — to use it 
by itself, and to shape it into rough pots, which 
were dried either in the sun or before the fire ; 
and hence arose the beautiful art of making 
earthenware. 

VI. Dwellings. 

Besides living in caves, holes were dug in 
the ground, a wall being made of the earth which 
was thrown out, and a covering of tree-boughs 
put over it. Sometimes, where blocks of stone 
were found lying loosely, they were placed 
together, and a rude, strong kind of hut made 
in this way. 

There have been found in lakes, especially in 
Swiss lakes, remains of houses which were built 
upon piles driven into the bed of the lake. The 
shape of many of these piles shows that they 
were cut with stone hatchets ; and this proves 
that people lived in this curious fashion in 
very early times. It is thought that they did so 



Sect. VI.] OF THE WORLD. 31 

to be freer from the attacks of their enemies and 
of wild beasts. 

These lake-dwellers, as they are called (and 
they not only lived thus in the Stone Age and 
later ages, but there are people living in the 
same manner in the East Indies and other 
places at this day), made good use of their 
stone hatchets ; for they not only cut down trees, 
but killed such animals — and very fierce they 
were — as the bear, wolf, and wild boar. They 
had learned to fish with nets made of flax, 
which they floated with buoys of bark, and sank 
with stone weights. 

Besides what we know about the dwellings of 
men in early times, there have been found on 
the shores of Denmark, Scotland, and elsewhere, 
enormous heaps of what are called " kitchen- 
middens." These were really the feeding-places 
of the people who lived on or about those coasts, 
and are made up of piles of shells, largely those 
of the oyster, mussel, periwinkle, &c., on which 
they fed. With these there have also been 
found the bones of stags and other animals, 
and also of birds, as well as flint knives and 
other thino-s. 



32 THE CHILD ROOD [Part i. 

I said at starting, that the three things which 
man would first need were food, fire, and shelter ; 
and, having told you how these were procured 
by him, you are perhaps wondering how these 
people of the Stone Age spoke to each other, 
and what words they used. This we shall never 
know ; but we may be sure that they had some 
way of making their thoughts known one to 
another, and that they learned to speak and 
write and count little by little, just as t-hey 
learned every thing else. They had some idea 
of drawing ; for bones, and pieces of slate, have 
been found, with rough sketches of the mam- 
moth, bull, and other beasts, scratched on them. 
These old-world pictures witness to the truth, 
that man is greater than the brutes, in this as in 
other things ; since no brute has yet been known 
to draw a picture, write an alphabet, or learn 
how to make a fire. 

But I shall have something to say about 
speaking and writing by and by. 



Sect, vii.] OF THE WORLD. 33 



VII, Use of Metals. 

In course of time some man, wiser than his 
fellows, made use of his quicker eye and more 
active brain to discover the metals which the 
earth contained ; and this marks a great gain, 
for which we cannot be too thankful. When we 
think about the thousand different uses to which 
metals are put, — how without them no ship big 
enough and strong enough to cross the ocean 
could have been built, or steam-engine to speed 
us along constructed, — we learn how enormous 
is their value to us. It is certain, that, if man 
had never discovered them, he would have re- 
mained in a savage, or at least a barbarous state. 

Through all the story of his progress, we see 
that he never went to the storehouse of the 
earth in vain. Therein were treasured up for 
him the metals which he needed when stone 
was found to be too blunt and soft for the work 
he wished to do ; therein the vast coal-beds 
which were laid open to supply the cosey fires 
when wood grew scarce. 



34 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

Gold, which means the yellow, bright metal 
(from gulr, yellow), was, most likely, the first 
metal used by man. Its glitter would attract 
his eye, while, unlike some other metals, ut- is 
found in rivers, and on various rocks on tne 
surface of the earth. It has to be mixed with 
another metal to be hard enough for gencal 
use ; and, in its native state, would be there- 
fore easily shaped into ornaments. Savage and 
polished people are alike in this love of orna- 
ment Necklaces of shells and amber, made in 
the Stone Age, have been found ; and, to this 
day, savages think of decoration before dress. 
One very common way of making themselves 
smart, as they think, is by marking their face, 
body, and limbs with curved lines, made with a 
pointed instrument, filling in the marks with 
color. This is called tattooing. If this shows 
that people have, in all places and times, loved to 
look fine, although they have gone through pain 
and discomfort as the price, it also shov/s that 
the love of what is beautiful, or what is thought 
to be beautiful, is theirs ; and that is another 
thins: which the brute has not. No herds of 



Sect, vii.] OF THE WORLD. 35 

COWS ever leave off feeding to admire a sunset ; 
and you never saw a horse or a monkey with 
face lit up with delight at the sight of a rain- 
bow. 

Copper is a metal which came into early use, 
as, like gold, it is often found unmixed with 
any thing else, and its softness enables it to be 
worked into various shapes. Where it was 
scarce, and tin could be had, fire was made use 
of to melt and mix the two together, forming 
the pretty, hard, and useful metal called bronze. 
By pouring the molten mass into a mould of 
stone or sand, weapons of the shape wanted 
would be made. 

The age when the metals I have named were 
used is called the " Age of Bronze." A very 
long time passed before iron was smelted, that 
is, melted and got away from the ore (or vein 
running through the rock) with which it is 
found, because this is very hard work, and needs 
more skill than men had then : but, when they 
succeeded in smelting and moulding it, it took 
the place of bronze for making spear-heads, 
swords, hatchets, &c. ; bronze being used for the 



36 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i, 

handles and for ornaments, many of which — ■ 
such as earrings, bracelets, and hairpins — have 
been found among the ruins in the Swiss lakes. 
Silver and lead were used later still. 

You have thus far learned, that by finding in 
river-beds, caverns, and elsewhere, various tools, 
weapons, ornaments, and other remains, some of 
them at great depth, and all without doubt 
made by man, it is known that he must have 
lived many thousands of years before we have 
any records of him in histories written on papy- 
rus (which was the reed from which the ancients 
made their paper, — hence the name " paper "), 
or painted on the walls of tombs. 

By way of marking the steps in man's prog- 
ress, his early history is divided into three 
periods, named after the things used in them, as 
thus : — 

1. The Age of Stone, which, as stated at 

page 14, is also divided into the Old 
Stone Age and the Newer Stone Age. 

2. The Age of Bronze. 

3. The Age of Iron. 



Sect, vil] OF THE WORLD. 3^ 

When you can get to the British Museum, 
go into the room where the " British Anti- 
quities" are kept; and there you will see for 
yourself the different flint and metal tools and 
weapons which I have described. 

How many years passed between the shaping 
of the first flint, and the moulding of the first 
bronzed weapon, is not known. We are sure 
that men used stone before they used bronze 
and iron, and that some tribes were in the 
Stone Age when other tribes had found out the 
value of metals. The three ages overlap and 
run into each other, " like the three chief colors 
of the rainbow." 

For example, although some of the lake- 
dwellings, about which I have told you, were 
built by men in the Stone Age, a very large 
number belong to the Bronze Age ; and the 
relics which have been brought to light show 
how decided was the progress which man had 
made. The lake-dwellers had learned to cul- 
tivate wheat, to store up food for winter use, to 
weave garments of flax, and to tame the most 
useful animals, such as the horse, the sheep, 



38 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

and the goat. Man had long before this found 
out what a valuable creature the dog is ; for the 
lowest tribes who lived on the northern sea- 
coasts have left proof of this in the bones found 
among the shell-heaps. 

In what is known as the Age of Iron very 
rapid progress was made ; and while the variety 
of pottery, the casting of bronze coins, the 
discovery of glass, and a crowd of other new 
inventions, show what great advance was made 
in the things man used, they show also how fast 
man himself was rising from a low state. 

VIII. Man's Great Age on the Earth. 

At this point of the story you will, perhaps, 
be asking a question to which I will give the 
best answer that can at present be found. 

You will ask how it is that • we know these 
remains of early man to be so very, very old. 

To make my reply as clear as possible, I will 
describe to you one of the many places in 
which the old bones and weapons have been 
found. 



Sect, viii.] OF THE WORLD. 39 

There is a large cavern at Brixham, on the 
south coast of Devonshire, which was discovered 
fourteen years ago through the falhng in of a 
part of the roof The floor is of stalagmite, or 
particles of lime, which have been brought 
down from the roof by the dropping of water, 
and become hardened into stone again. Stalag- 
mite comes from a Greek word which means a 
drop. In this floor, which is about one foot in 
thickness, were found bones of the reindeer and 
cave-bear ; while below it was a red loamy mass, 
fifteen feet thick, in some parts, in which were 
buried flint flakes, or knives, and bones of the 
mammoth. Beneath this was a bed of gravel 
more than twenty feet thick, in which flint 
flakes and some small bones were found. 
Altogether, more than thirty flints were found 
in the same cave with the bones of bears and 
woolly elephants ; and, as they are known to 
have been chipped by the hand of man, it is not 
hard to prove that he lived in this country when 
those creatures roamed over it. 

But what proof have we, you ask, that the 
bones of these creatures are so very old } 



40 THE CHILDHOOD [Part l 

Apart from the fact, that, for many centuries, 
no living mammoth has been seen, we have the 
finding of its bones buried at a goodly depth ; 
and, as it is certain that no one would trouble 
to dig a grave to put them in, there must be 
some other cause for the mass of loam under 
which they are found. 

There are several ways by which the various 
bones may have got into the cave. The crea- 
tures to which they belonged may have died 
on the hillside, and their bones have been 
washed into the cave ; or they may have sought 
refuge, or, what in the case I am now describing 
seems most likely, lived therein ; but, be this as 
it may, we have to account for the thirty-five 
feet of loam and gravel in which their remains 
are buried. 

The agent that thus covered them from view 
for long, long years is that active tool of nature 
which, before the day when no living thing 
was upon the earth, and ever since, has been 
cutting through rocks, opening the deep valleys, 
shaping the highest mountains, hollowing out 
the lowest caverns, and which is carrying the 



Sect, vtii.] OF THE WORLD. 41 

soil from one place to another to form new lands 
where now the deep sea rolls. It is water which 
carried that deposit into Brixham Cavern, and 
covered over the bones, and which, since the 
day that mammoth and bear and reindeer lived 
in Devonshire, has scooped out the surrounding 
valleys a hundred feet deeper ; and although the 
time which water takes to deepen a channel, 
or eat out a cavern, depends upon the speed 
with which it flows, you may judge that the 
quickest stream works slowly to those who 
watch it, when I tell you that the river Thames, 
flowing at its present rate, takes eleven thou- 
sand seven hundred and forty years to scoop 
out its valley one foot lower ! Men of science 
have therefore some reason for believing that 
the flint weapons were made by men who lived 
many thousands of years ago. 

"A thousand years in thy sight are but as 
yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in 
the night." 

Science, in thus teaching us the great age of 
the earth, also teaches us the e'"ernity of the 
ageless God ; and likewise thoie vast distances, 

4* 



42 THE ^ CHILDHOOD [Parti 

about which astronomers tell us, make the uni- 
verse seem a fitter temple for him to dwell in 
than did the old, cramped notions of a flat earth, 
for whose benefit alone the sun shed his light 
by day, and the moon and stars their light by 
night. Science illumines with new beauty the 
grand thoughts of the star-watching poet of old, 
who sang, " If I ascend up into heaven. Thou 
art there ; if I make my bed in the unseen 
world, behold. Thou art there." 

IX. Mankind as Shepherds, Farmers, 
Traders. 

From being a roving, wild, long-haired savage, 
gnawing roots, or crouching behind rock or 
tree to pounce upon his prey, uncertain each 
morning whether night would not set in before 
he could get enough to eat, man had become a 
shepherd, or tiller of the soil, not only learning 
the greatness of the earth in which he had been 
placed, but also beginning dimly to feel his own 
greatness above the beast of the field and the 
fowl of the air. 



Sect, ix.] OF THE WORLD. 43 

Some part of mankind, finding how useful 
certain animals were for the milk and flesh 
which they gave as food, and for the skins, 
especially of their young ones, which could 
be made into soft clothing, had learned to tame 
and gather them into flocks and herds, moving 
with them from place to place wherever the 
most grass could be had. These men were 
the first shepherds or herdsmen, living a nomad 
(which means wandering) life, dwelling in tents 
because they could be easily removed. 

This was the kind of life that Abraham 
lived thousands of years ago, and that the 
Arabs and other wandering tribes still live at 
this day. 

While some loved the shepherd's or herds- 
man's life, others chose a more settled state, 
becoming farmers, or tillers of the earth. The 
word earth means \hQ ploughed. 

To do this work well, the rude stone imple- 
ments of their forefathers were useless ; and 
implements made of the best and hardest 
metals were needed. Then, as they remained 
in one place, they would not be content with 



44 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

log huts as men were in the Stone Age, or 
with tents as the nomads were, but would have 
their houses well built, with places like stables 
and barns in which to lodge their cattle and 
store up their corn. 

All the sunny days would be wanted for 
their field-work ; and they would therefore be 
glad to employ others, who could build their 
houses and make their tools. Thus, one after 
another, different trades would arise and be 
carried on, which would bring people together 
for mutual help and gain : thus houses would 
multiply into villages, villages would become 
towns, and towns would grow into cities. 

The different classes of people would unite to- 
gether for protection against their enemies ; and 
either all would learn the art of war, or would 
select some of the bravest and strongest among 
them to become the army to defend the land. 
Some one man, the best and ablest they could 
find, would be chosen to carry out the laws 
which the people agreed to make for the well- 
being of all. 

For in early, as well as in later times, the 



Sect, ix.] OF THE WORLD. 4«i 

bad passions and jealousies of men broke out, 
and caused those desolating wars which have 
darkened so many bright spots in this world. 
It is certain that the tillers of the soil and the 
dwellers in towns would be more inclined to 
a peaceful and quiet life than the roving tribes, 
or the chieftain with his followers and herds 
and flocks, who would often seek to gain by 
force what they coveted. 

Not that these were always to blame, but 
they would be the more likely of the two to 
" pick a quarrel." Disputes arose between them 
about the ownership of the land : the nomads, 
who loved the lazy ease of a pastoral life more 
than the hard work of tool-making or house- 
building, would want to share some of the good 
fruits which the farmers were making the earth 
to yield, or some of the bright, sharp-edged 
weapons which the metal-workers were mould- 
ing ; and, in various ways, " bad blood," as people 
call it, would be stirred, which would end in 
fighting. The stronger would conquer the 
weaker, seize upon or lay waste their land, and 
make slaves of such of the prisoners as they 



46 THE CHILDHOOD [Part l 

thought it worth while to spare. It was an age, 
Ske many ages since, when no tender feeHngs 
ruled in the heart of man, but when the "golden 
rule " was not, and the harsh, stern law was 
this : — 

" That they shall take who have the power, 
And they shall keep who can." 

But wars do not last forever ; and men would 
find that it was, after all, better to live in friend- 
ship and peace. So they would trade together : 
the earth would yield the farmer more food 
than he needed ; and he would be glad to barter 
with it, giving some of it to the herdsman in 
exchange for cattle, and to the toolmaker in 
exchange for tools, each of whom would be very 
glad to trade with him. 

Then, as bartering grew, it was found very 
awkward and cumbersome to carry things from 
place to place, especially if they were now and 
then not very much wanted ; and people would 
agree to make use of something which was 
handy to carry, steady in value, and that did 
not spoil by keeping. So, whenever they could, 
men fixed upon pieces of metal, first casting 



Sect, x.] OF THE WORLD. 47 

bronze into coins, and then using gold and 
silver, which, being scarcer than other metals, 
are worth more. We learn from the paintings 
at Thebes, and from ancient history, that gold 
and silver were counted as wealth in early times. 
Abraham is said, in the Book of Genesis, to have 
been " very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold." 
The word " pecuniary," which is used in speak- 
ing of a man's riches, comes from the Latin 
word pecus, which means cattle, and shows that 
formerly a man's wealth was sometimes reck- 
oned by the cattle he had. Another proof of 
the meaning that a word will hold. 

And this reminds me that I have to tell you 
a little about speaking, writing, and counting. 

X. Language. 

In what way the wonderful gift of language 
came to man we do not know ; and the wise of 
many ages have tried in vain to find out. 

The same God who made the beautiful organs 
in man by which he can utter so many different 
sounds gave him the DOwer of creating names 



48 THE CHILDHOOD [Part \ 

for the things which he saw, and words for the 
thoughts which dwelt in his mind. 

There are some words which we can account 
for, such as those which imitate sounds, as when 
we say the clock " ticks," or call the " cuckoo " 
and the " peewit " after the sound they make ; 
but this explains only a portion of the vast 
number of words which make up a language, 
and which spring from roots deep down, — too 
deep for u-s to track. 

Man at first had very few words, and those 
were short ones ; and, in m^aking known his 
thoughts to others, he used signs very much, — 
" gesture-language," as it has been called. We 
do the same now ; for in shaking the head to 
mean " no," in nodding it to mean " yes," and 
in shaking hands in proof that we are joined 
m friendship, we speak in gesture-language, and 
would have to do it a great deal, if we were 
travelling in some country of which we did not 
know the language. 

There are very few things that cannot be 
expressed by signs or gestures ; and, among the 
ancients, entire plays were performed by persons 



Sect, x.] OF THE WORLD. 49 

called pantomimes (which word means imita- 
tors of all things), who acted, not by speaking, 
but wholly by mimicry. 

A story is told of a king who was in Rome 
when Nero was emperor, and who, having seen 
the wonderful mimicry of a pantomime, begged 
him as a present, so that he might make use of 
him to have dealings with the nations whose 
languages he did not know. We have now so 
many words, that we need use signs but very 
little, if at all. 



Just as all the races of mankind are thought 
to have come from one family, so the different 
languages which they speak are thought to have 
flowed from one source. 

There are three leading streams of language ; 
and I shall have to quote a few hard names in 
telling you about them. 

It was thought some years ago that Hebrew, 
which is the language in which the sacred books 
of the Jews (known to us as the Old Testament) 
are written, was the parent, so to speak, of all 



50 THE CHILDHOOD [Fart l 

other languages ; but it has since been found, 
through tracing words to their early forms, that 
I. Sanskrit, in which the sacred books of 
the Brahmins are written, and which 
was a spolcen tongue in the time of 
Solomon and Alexander the Great, but 
which has been a "dead " or unspoken 
language for more than two thousand 
years ; 
Zend, in which the sacred books of the 
Parsees (or so-called fire-worshippers) 
are written ; 
Greek, the language of Greece ; 
Latin, the language of the ancient 
Romans ; 
and nearly all the other dialects and languages 
of India and Europe, — are children of the Indo- 
European, or Aryan family. 

I told you something about these Aryans at 
page 19, and will add, that, through their lan- 
guage, we know that they had learned " the arts 
of ploughing and making roads, of sewing and 
weaving, of building houses, and of counting 
as far as one hundred." The ties of father, 



Sect. X.] OF THE WORLD. 51 

mother, brother, and sister, were hallowed among 
them; and they called upon God, who "is 
Light," by the name still heard in Christian 
churches and Indian temples. That name 
is Deity. It comes from a very ancient word by 
which these people spoke of the sky, and which 
was afterwards applied to Him who dwells in 
the sky. For " beyond sun and moon and 
stars, and all which changes and will change, 
was the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament 
of heaven." There man, in every age, has fixed 
the dwelling-place of God, who is Light, and in 
whnm is no darkness at all, 

2. The second division of languages in- 

cludes the Hebrew ; the Arabic, in 
which the Koran, the sacred book of 
the Mohammedans, is written ; and the 
languages on the very old monuments 
of Phoenicia, Babylon, Assyria, and 
Carthage. 

3. The third division includes the remain- 

ing languages of Asia, with the excep- 
tion of the Chinese, which stands by 
itself as the only relic of the first 



52 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

forms of human speech, being made up 

of words of one syllable. 
The ancient language of Britain is now found 
only in some parts of Wales, Ireland, and 
Scotland ; and the foundation of our present 
language, which now contains above one hun- 
dred thousand words, is the same as that spoken 
on the coast of Germany. It was brought over 
by Angles, Saxons (hence Anglo-Saxons), 
Jutes, and other tribes from the Continent. 
Anglo-Saxon is the mother-tongue of our 
present English ; to which, in various forms, 
Latin words have been added, together with a 
few words from the languages of other nations. 

For teaching you the different changes in the 
English language, as well as for an interesting 
list of words borrowed from the Arabic, 
Turkish, Chinese, &c., the best books to help 
you are Dr. Morris's " Historical Outlines of 
English Accidence," and Archbishop Trench's 
" English Past and Present." 

I am afraid I have confused you a little, in 
this talk about language ; but you can hear it 
another time over agai n when you are older, and 



Sect, xi.] OF THE V/OR.\D. 53 

better able to learn the importance belonging to 
the study of the wonderful gift by which we 
are able to talk to people in various languages, 
and read in ancient books the history of man's 
gropings after God. I want to lead you on to 
feel and know that the study of words is a 
delightful way of spending time, and that the 
dictionary, which is thought by most people to 
be a dry book, is full of poetry and history and 
beauty locked up in its words, which the key of 
the wise will open. 

XI. Writing. 

It is much easier to tell you how men learned 
to write. 

The use of writing is to put something before 
the eye in such a way that its meaning may be 
known at a glance ; and the earliest way of 
doing this was by a picture. Picture-writing 
was thus used for many ages, and is still found 
among savage races in all quarters of the globe. 
On rocks, stone slabs, trees, and tombs, this 
way was employed to record an event, or tell 
some message. 

6* 



54 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

In the course of time, instead of this tedious 
mode, men learned to write signs for certain 
words or sounds. Then the next step was tc 
separate the word into letters, and to agree 
upon certain signs to always represent certain 
letters ; and hence arose alphabets. The shape 
of the letters of the alphabet is thought by 
some to bear traces of the early picture-writing. 
To show you what is meant, Aleph, the first 
letter of the Hebrew alphabet, means an ox ; 
and the sign of that letter was an outline of 
an oxs head. 

The signs used by astronomers for the sun, 
moon, and planets ; the signs I, II, III, for one, 
two, and three, — are proofs, that, if picture- 
writing is of value to man in a civilized state, 
it must have been of greater value to him, and 
much more used by him, the farther we search 
back. We still speak of signing our name ; 
although we have ceased to use a sign or mark, 
as was done when few could write. 



Sect, xii.] OF THE WORLD. 55 



XII. Counting. 

The art of counting is slowly learned by 
savage tribes ; and, at this day, some are found 
that cannot reckon beyond four, or that, if they 
can, have no words for higher figures. 

All over the world the fingers have been, and 
are, used as counters ; and, among many tribes, 
the word for " hand " and " five " is the same. 

This may be taken as a common mode by 
which the savage reckons : — 

One hand .... 5 

Two hands, or half a man . . 10 
Two hands and one foot . . 15 
Hands and feet, or one man . 20 

We do the same, as shown in the word digity 
which is the name for any of the figures from 
one to nine, and comes from the Latin digitus, 
which means a finger ; while counting by fives 
and tens enters into all our dealings. One 
early way of counting was by pebbles, the 
Latin for which is calculi ; and we preserve this 
fact in our use of the word calculate: just as, 



56 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

when we tie a knot in our handkerchief, to 
remind us of something we fear to forget, we 
are copying the ancient plan of counting with 
knotted cords. 

This story of the World's Childhood has been 
chiefly learned by studying the lessons taught 
by those traces of man which are found in the 
north-western part of Europe ; but it is believed 
that he first lived elsewhere, and afterwards 
travelled here. For in the days known as the 
Ancient Stone Age, when Britain and Ireland 
were joined to the mainland, and great rivers 
flowed through the valleys which are now cov- 
ered by the German Ocean and English Chan- 
nel, and when woolly-haired elephants and 
rhinoceroses roamed about the pine forests of 
what is now England and France, Europe was 
very much colder than it is now ; and it is 
thought that man did not live there before these 
huge creatures. 

You will one day learn from the beautiful 
story which rocks and rivers are ever telling, 
what vast changes have happened over all the 



Sect, xiu.] OF THE WORLD. 57 

earth, in proof of which you may think about 
what I have already said ; to which may be 
added, that the sea once swept over the place 
where you live, and ages hence may flow over 
it as:ain. 



XIII. Man's Wanderings from his First 
Home. 

It is believed that man lived at first some- 
where near the middle of Asia ; and, from thence, 
those who came after him spread on all sides, 
— some settling in the rich plains watered by the 
river Nile, to become the forefathers of Egyp- 
tian kings ; others wandering to the bleak shores 
of Northern Europe, to become the forefathers 
of the sea-kings. 

As the climate in which people live affects 
the color of their skins, so the progress of any 
race, as well as the kind of life which they 
live, depends very much on the land they dwell 
in ; and this will explain why some races have 
progressed so much more than others, and even 
become their rulers. Where there were rich, 



58 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i, 

grassy plains, the people gathered flocks and 
herds, wandered from place to place in search 
of good pasture, and made scarcely any 
advance. Where a fruitful soil and balmy air 
were to be had, there people would settle as 
farmers, and workers in wood and metals, 
gathering both knowledge and wealth ; while 
those who lived on islands, and by the sea-coasts, 
became adventurous and bold. 

It is not the object of this narrative to 
take you beyond the time when histories 
usually begin ; and what you have learned does 
not, therefore, relate to any single tribe or 
nation, but to the growth of mankind as a 
whole. I will, however, sketch in a few lines 
the course which the leading races of mankind 
took after they left their supposed common 
home. 

The tribes "who wandered into the northern 
parts of Europe lived for ages a wild roving 
life ; and when they had so far advanced as to 
find out, or, what is more likely, learn from 
other races, the use of metals, and then to 
apply their powers in building ships stout ano" 



Sect, xiii.] OF THE WORLD. 59 

Strong enough to brave the open sea, they 
became the terror of quiet people ; and you 
will learn from old English history how they 
pounced, one after another, upon the island of 
Great Britain, plundering wherever and what- 
ever they could. 

Other tribes settled down in Persia, on the 
sea-board of Palestine, in Egypt, and were 
the roots from which grew those mighty na- 
tions v»?hose kings had reigned for many years 
before the birth of Abraham. Other tribes 
leaped across the narrow straits between Asia 
and America, and wandered over the vast New 
World, those who travelled southwards becom- 
ing builders of cities whose ruins tell of their 
past importance. 

Long before the great empires of Greece 
and Rome, there arose a people known to us 
as the Jews, whose history fills so many books 
of the Bible, and who were descended from a 
chieftain named Abraham. I shall have some 
interesting stories to tell you farther on con- 
cerning this good and noble man. 

Abraham left his native land, and moved 



6o THE CHILDHOOD [Part i. 

with his slaves and cattle to Palestine. His 
descendants afterwards settled in Egypt, which 
was then a great corn-yielding country, where 
they grew to large numbers, and were treated 
kindly during the lifetime of Joseph, whose 
touching story is told in the Book of Genesis. 
After his death they were, however, made 
slaves, and used very harshly. A good, learned, 
and heroic man, named Moses, who, although 
he had been brought up by the king's daughter 
as her son, burned with righteous anger for the 
wrongs of his oppressed countrymen, rose at 
the head of them, and delivered them. How 
they journeyed to Palestine, living under chiefs 
or judges ; killing, in the cruel manner of that 
age, men, women, and children ; how they grew 
and prospered, but, falling into vice, became 
weak and enslaved ; then rose again for a time, 
until, when Jesus Christ lived, they were subject 
to the Roman Empire, you will learn from 
Scripture histories. 



Sect, xiv.] OF THE WORLD. 6i 



XIV. Man's Progress in all Things. 

The early history of man shows us how 
wonderful his progress has been when we com- 
pare the Age of Stone with our present happy 
lot. Not only in house-building, cooking, pot- 
tery, clothing, various uses of metals, have rude 
ways been improved upon, but also in his 
knowledge of the earth beneath and the stars 
around has the progress of man been vast. 
The lightning and the wind, the rushing stream, 
daily work for him ; and their force is chained 
to do his bidding. He has already seen a good 
depth, and may see farther yet, into the mystery 
of the stars ; and every day he is spelling out 
some sentence here and there in the great book 
of nature. 

One would like to know and thank those men 
of the past who laid the foundation of all that 
has since been done. For he who first chipped 
a flint was the father of all sculptors ; he who 
first scratched a picture of man or mammoth 

6 



62 THE CHILDHOOD [Part i 

was the father of all painters ; he who first 
piled stones together was the father of all 
builders of abbeys and cathedrals ; he who first 
bored a hole in a reindeer's bone to make a 
whistle, or twanged a stretched sinew, was the 
father of all musicians ; he who first rhymed 
his simple thoughts was the father of all poets ; 
he who first strove to learn the secret of sun 
and star was the father of all astronomers. 

XV. Decay of Peoples. 

I have called this " simple account of man 
in early times" by the title of the "Childhood 
of the World," because the progress of the 
world from its past to its present state is like 
the growth of each of us from childhood to 
manhood or womanhood. 

Although the story has, on the whole, flowed 
smoothly along, we must not leave out of sight 
the terrible facts which have sometimes checked 
the current. History, in books and in ruins, 
teaches that there have been tribes and nations 
(some of the nations so great and splendid that 



Sect, xv.] OF THE WORLD. 63 

it seemed impossible for them ever to fall), 
which have reached a certain point, then de- 
cayed and died. And, since man has lived so 
many thousands of years on the earth, there 
must have risen and fallen races and tribes of 
which no trace will ever be found. 

The cause of the shameful sin and crime of 
which every place in this world has been more 
or less the scene has sometimes been man's 
ignorance of what is due to his God and his 
fellow-man, but more often his wilful use of 
power to do evil ; forgetting, in his folly and 
wrong-doing, that the laws of God change not ; 
that sin is a fair-dealing master, and pays his 
servants the wages of death. They have dis- 
obeyed the law of love, and hence have arisen 
cruel wars and shocking butcheries ; captures 
of free people, and the crushing of their brave 
spirits in slavery. They have disobeyed the 
laws of health, and the plague or " black death " 
has killed tens of thousands ; or gluttony and 
drunkenness have destroyed them. They have 
loved money and selfish ease (forgetting the 
eternal fact that not one of us can live by bread 



64 THE CHILDHOOD [?art i. 

alone, but that we live our lowliest, if that be the 
end and aim of our life), and their souls, lean 
and huiigry, have perished. 

But although the hand on the clock-face of 
progress has seemed now and then to stand 
still, or even to go back, it is a great truth for 
our comfort and trust, that the world gets better 
and not worse. There are some people who 
are always sighing for what is not or cannot 
be ; who look back to the days of their child- 
hood, and wish them here again ; who are ever 
talking of the "good old days" when laughter 
rang with richest mirth, when work was plen- 
tiful and beggars scarce, and life so free from 
care that wrinkles never marked the happy 
face. Do not listen to these people : they have 
either misread the past, or not read it at all. 
Like some other things, it is well-looking 
at a distance, but ill-looking near. We have 
not to go far back to the " good old days," to 
learn that kings and queens were worse lodged 
and fed and taught than a servant is now-a- 
days. 

It is very foolish and wrong to either wish 



Sect. XV.] OF THE WORLD. g^ 

the past back again, or to speak slightingly 
of it. It filled its place ; it did its appointed 
work. Even out of terrible wars, blessings have 
sometimes come ; and that which men have 
looked upon as evil has been fruitful in good. 
We cannot see the end as well as the begin- 
ning : God alone can do that. The true wisdom 
is to see in all the steps of this earth's progress 
the guiding hand of God, and to believe that 
he will not leave to itself the world which for 
his own pleasure he has created. For 
" Nothing walks with aimless feet." 

To you and to every one of us, God gives work 
to do ; and, if he takes it away, it is that others 
may do it better, and so the well-being of all be 
secured. 

Let us always strive to do thoroughly the 
work which we find nearest to our hand : 
though we may think it small and trifling, it 
is not so in the sight of Him who made the 
dewdrop as well as the sun, and who looks 
not so much upon the thing we have to do, 
as upon the way and the spirit in which we 
do it. 

6* 



PART II. 

XVI. Introductory. 

In seeking to show you by what slow steps 
man came to beUeve in one all-wise and all-good 
God, I wish to fix one great truth upon your 
young heart about him ; for the nobler your 
view of him is, the nobler is your life likely 
to be. 

Now, you would think your father very hard 
and cruel, if he loaded you with all the good 
things he had, and sent your brothers and sisters, 
each of them yearning for his love and kisses, 
to some homeless spot to live uncared for and 
unloved, and to die unwept. 

And yet this is exactly what some people 
have said that God does. They have spoken 
of Him who has given life to every man, woman, 
and child, without power on their part to take 



Sect, xvi.] CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 67 

or refuse what is thus given, as being near only 
a few of his creatures, and leaving the rest, feel- 
ing a soul-hunger after him, to care .for them- 
selves and to never find him. 

Believe that he who is called our Father 
is better, more just, more loving, than the best 
fathers can be, and that he "is not far from 
any one of us." 

In those dim ages through which I have 
led you, God, whose breath made and ever 
makes each of us "a living soul," was as near 
the people who lived then as he is near us, 
leading them, although they, like ourselves, often 
knew it not. The rudest, and to us in some 
things most shocking, forms of religion were 
not invented by any devil, permitted by God 
to delude men to destruction, but were, as 
we learn from savage races now, the early 
struggles of man from darkness to twilight, — 
for no man really loves the darkness, — and 
from twilight to full day. 

Around him was the beauty and motion of 
life ; before him very often the mystery of 
death : for there were weeping fathers and 



68 THE CHILDHOOD [Part u 

mothers in those old times over dead little 
children ; and friends stood silent and tearful 
beside their dead friends in those days, as they 
do in these ; and do you think that man would 
sit himself down to frame a wilful, cunning 
lie about the things which awed him ? 

Although the ideas which these early men 
had about what they saw and felt were wrong, 
they were right to them ; and it was only after 
a long time, when some shrewd man, making 
bad use of his shrewdness, pretended to know 
more than God will ever permit man to know 
here, that lies and juggling with the truth of 
things began. 

I tell you this, because I want you to feel 
a trust in God that nothing can take away; 
and how much you will need this trust, when 
your heart comes to feel the sin and sorrow 
of this world, the years that are before you will 
reveal, 

XVII. Man's First Questions. 

It was not long after man had risen from 
his first low state, and the chief wants of his 



Sect, xvii.] OF THE WORLD. 69 

body were supplied, that he would begin to 
act the man still more by thinking (see page 
18), and then would hear some voice within, 
telling him that eating and drinking were not 
the chief ends for which life had been given 
him. 

He saw around him the world, with its great 
silent hills and green valleys ; its rugged ridges 
of purple-tinted mountains, and miles of barren 
flat ; its trees and fragrant flowers ; the grace- 
ful forms of man, the soaring bird, the swift 
deer, and kingly lion ; the big, ungainly-shaped 
mammoth, long since died out ; the wide scene, 
beaming with the colors which came forth 
at the bidding touch of the sunlight, or bathed 
in the shadows cast by passing clouds : he saw 
the sun rise and travel to the west, carrying 
the light away ; the moon at regular times 
growing from sickle-shape to full round orb ; * 
then each night the stars, few or many, bursting 
out like sparks struck off the wheels of the 



* Moon means the nteas7irer, hence our word jnonth; "for time was 
measured by nights and moons long before it was reckoned by days and suns 
»nd years." 



70 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii, 

Sun-God's chariot, or like the glittering sprays 
of water cast by a ship as she ploughs the sea. 

His ears listened to the different sounds of 
nature, — the music of the flowing river ; the 
roar of the never-silent sea ; the rustle of the 
leaves, as they were swept by the unseen fingers 
of the breeze ; the patter of the rain, as it 
dropped from the great black clouds ; the 
rumble of the thunder, as it followed the spear- 
like flashes of light sent from the rolling clouds : 
these and a hundred other sounds, now harsh, 
now sweet, made him ask, What does it all 
mean ? Where and what am I ? Whence came 
I ? Whence came all that I see and hear and 
touch ? 

Man's first feeling was one of simple wonder ; 
his second feeling, the wish to find out the 
cause of things, — what it was that made them 
as they were. 

All around him was Nature (by which is 
meant that which brings fortJi), great, mighty, 
beautiful. Was it not all alive .-' For did it not 
all move .-' 

In thinking how man would seek to get at 



Sect, xviii.] OF THE WORLD. 71 

the cause of what he saw, we must not suppose 
that he could reason as we do ; but, although 
he could not shape his thoughts into polished 
speech, common sense stood by to help him. 

He knew that he himself moved or stood 
still as he chose, that his choice was ruled by 
certain reasons, and that only when he willed 
to do any thing was it done. Something within 
governed all that he did. Nature was not still : 
the river flowed, the clouds drifted, the leaves 
trembled, the earth shook ; sun, moon, and stars 
staid not. These, then, must be moved by 
something within them. 

Thus began a belief in spirits dwelling in 
every thing, — in sun, tree, waterfall, flame, beast, 
bird, and serpent. 

XVIII. Myths. 

In seeking to account for the kind of life 
which seemed to be (and really was, although 
not as he thought of it) in all things around, 
man shaped the most curious notions into the 
form of myths, by which is meant a fajiciful 



•J 2 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii 

Story, founded on something real. If to us a 
boat or a ship becomes a sort of personal thing, 
especially when named after any one ; if " Jack 
Frost," and " Old Father Christmas," which 
are but names, seem also persons to the mind 
of a little child, we may readily see how natural 
it is for savages to think that the flame licking 
up the wood is a living thing whose head could 
be cut off; to believe that the gnawing feeling 
of hunger is caused by a lizard or a bird in the 
stomach ; to imagine that the echoes which the 
hills threw back came from the dwarfs who 
dwelt among them, and that the thunder was the 
rumbling of the Heaven-God's chariot-wheels. 

Myths have changed their form in different 
ages ; but they remain among us even now, and 
live in many a word still used, the first meaning 
of which has died out. To show you what 
is meant, we often speak of a cross or sullen 
person being in a bad humor ; which word rests 
on a very old and false notion that there were 
four moistures, or humors, in the body, on the 
proper mixing of which the goocj or bad temper 
of a person depended. 



Sect, xix.] OF THE WORLD. 73 

In telling you a little about myths, I cannot 
attempt to show you where the simple early 
myths become later on stiffened- into the 
legends of heroes, with loves and fears and 
hates and mighty deeds, such as make up so 
much of the early history of Greece and Rome, 
for that you will learn from other and larger 
books than this. 

XIX. Myths about Sun and Moon. 

Among many, savage tribes, the sun and 
moon are thought to be man and wife, or brother 
and sister. One of the most curious myths of 
this kind comes from the Esquimaux, the 
dwellers in the far North. It relates that 
when a girl was at a party, some one told his 
love for her by shaking her shoulders after the 
manner of the country. She could not see who 
it was in the dark hut, so she smeared her 
hands with soot ; and, when he came back, she 
blackened his cheek with her hand. When 
a light was brought, she saw that it was her 
Dfother, and fled. He ran after her, and followed 
7 



74 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii. 

her as she came to the end of the earth and 
sprang out into the sky. There she became the 
sun, and he the moon ; and this is why the moon 
is always chasing the sun through the heavens, 
and why the moon is sometimes dark as he 
turns his blackened cheek towards the earth. 

In all the languages known as Teutonic, the 
moon was of the male gender and the sun of 
the female gender. 

Among other people, and in later times, the 
sun is spoken of as the lover of the dawn, who 
went before him, killing her with his bright 
spear-like rays ; while night was a living thing, 
which swallowed up the day. If the sun is a 
face streaming with locks of light, the moon 
is a silver boat, or a mermaid living half her 
time under the water. When the sun shone 
with a pleasant warmth, he was called the friend 
of man ; when his heat scorched the earth, he 
was said to be slaying his children. You have 
perhaps heard that the dark patches on the 
moon's face, which look so very much like a 
nose and two eyes, gave rise to the notion of 
a " man in the moon," who was said to be set 
up there for picking sticks on a Sunday ! 



Sect, xx.] OF THE WORLD. yg 



XX. Myths about Eclipses. 

There is something so weird and gloomy in 
eclipses of the sun and moon, that we can 
readily understand how through all the world 
they have been looked upon as the direct work 
of some dreadful power. 

The Chinese imagine them to be caused by 
great dragons trying to devour the sun and 
moon, and beat drums and brass kettles to 
make the monsters give up their prey. Some 
of the tribes of American Indians speak of 
the moon as hunted by huge dogs, catching 
and tearing her till her soft light is reddened 
and put out by the blood flowing from her 
wounds. To this day in India the native beats 
his gong as the moon passes across the sun's 
face ; and it is not so very long ago that in 
Europe both eclipses and rushing comets were 
thought to show that troubles were near. 

Fear is the daughter of Ignorance, and 
departs when knowledge enlightens us as to 
Uie cause of thinsrs. 



76 7HE CHILDHOOD [Part ii. 

We know that an eclipse (which comes from 
Greek words meaning to leave out or forsake) 
is caused either by the moon passing in such 
a line between the earth and the sun as to 
cause his light to be in part or altogether hid- 
den, — left out for a short time, — or by the earth 
so passing between the sun and moon as to 
throw its shadow upon the moon, and partly or 
wholly hide her light. Our fear would arise if 
eclipses did not happen at the very moment 
when astronomers have calculated them to 
occur. 

XXL Myths about Stars, 

There is a curious Asian myth about the 
stars, which tells that the sun and moon are 
both women. The stars are the moon's children, 
and the sun once had as many. Fearing that 
mankind could not bear so much light, each 
agreed to eat up her children. The moon hid 
\iers away ; but the sun kept her word, which 
no sooner had she done than the moon brought 
her children from their hiding-place. When 



Sect. xxi.J OF THE WORLD. 77 

the sun saw them, she was filled with rage, and 
chased the moon to kill her ; and the chase has 
lasted ever since. Sometimes the sun comes 
near enough to bite the moon, and that is an 
eclipse. The sun, as men may still see, devours 
her stars at dawn ; but the moon hides hers all 
day while the sun is near, and brings them out 
at night only, when the sun is far away. 

The names still in use for certain clusters 
of stars and single stars were given long ago, 
when the stars were thought to be living 
creatures. They were said to be men who 
had once lived here, or to be mighty hunters, 
or groups of young men and maidens dancing. 
Many of the names given show that the stars 
were watched with anxiety by the farmer and 
sailor, who thought they ruled the weather. 
The group of stars known to us as the Pleiades 
were so called from the ^ord plein, which means 
to sail ; because the old Greek sailors watched 
for their rising before they ventured on the 
ocean. The same stars were called the digging 
stars by the Zulus, who live in South Africa ; 
because, when they appear, the people begin to 
7* 



78 THE CHILDHOOD [Part il 

dig. A very good illustration of the change 
which a myth takes is afforded by these same 
stars, which are spoken of in Greek mythology 
as the seven daughters of Atlas (who was said 
to bear the world on his shoulders), six of 
whom were wedded to the gods, but the seventh 
to a king ; for which reason Merope, as she is 
named, shines the faintest of them all. 

The stars were formerly believed to govern 
the fate of a person in life. The temper was 
said to be good or bad, the nature grave or 
gay, according to the planet which was in the 
ascendent, as it was called, at birth. Several 
words in our language witness to this old 
belief. We speak of a " disaster," which means 
the stroke or blast of an unlucky star ; astef 
being a Greek word for star. We call a person 
" ill-starred," or " born under a lucky star." 
Grave and gloomy people are called " saturnine," 
because those born under the planet Saturn 
were said to be so disposed. Merry and happy- 
natured people are called "jovial," as born under 
the planet Jupiter, or Jove. Active and sprightly 
people are called " mercurial," as born under 



Sect, xxil] OF THE WORLD. yp 

the planet Mercury. Mad people are called 
" lunatics." Ltma is the Latin word for moon ; 
and the more sane movements of the insane 
were believed to depend upon her phases or 
appearance of change in form. 

Sun, moon, and stars were all thought to be 
fixed to the great heaven (which means Jieaved 
or lifted up, and comes from an Anglo-Saxon 
word hefan, to lift), because it seemed like a 
solid arch over the flat earth. To many a mind 
it was the place of bliss, where care and want 
and age could never enter. The path to it 
was said to be along that bright-looking band 
across the sky, known to us as the " Milky Way," 
the sight of which has given birth to several 
beautiful myths. I should like to stay and 
tell you some of them ; but we must not let the 
myths keep us too long from the realities. 

XXIL Myths about the Earth and Man. 

The waterspout was thought to be a giant 
or sea-serpent, reaching from sea to sky; the 
rainbow (which books about light will tell you 



8o THE CHILDHOOD [Part h 

is a circle, half only of which we can see) was 
said to be a living demon, coming down to drink 
when the rain fell, or, prettier myth, the heaven- 
ladder or bridge along which the souls of the 
blest are led by angels to Paradise, or the bow 
of God set in the clouds, as Indian, Jew, and 
Fin have called it ; the clouds were cows 
driven by the children of the morning to their 
pasture in the blue fields of heaven ; the tides 
were the beating of the ocean's heart ; the earth- 
quake was caused by the earth-tortoise moving 
underneath ; the lightning was the forked tongue 
of the storm-demon, the thunder was his roar ; 
volcanoes were the dwelling-places of angry 
demons, who threw up red-hot stones from 
them. 

Man's sense of the wonderful is so strong, 
that a belief in giants and pygmies and fairies 
was as easy to him as it has been hard to 
remove. The bones of huge beasts now extinct 
were said to have belonged to giants, whose 
footprints were left in those hollows in stones 
which we know to be water-worn. The big 
loose stones were said to have been torn from 



Sect, xxii.] OF THE WORLD. 81 

the rocks by the giants, and hurled at their foes 
in battle. The stories of the very small people 
who once lived in Europe, and whose descend- 
ants now live in Lapland, gave rise to a belief 
in dwarfs. The flint arrow-heads of the Stone 
Age were said to be elf-darts used by the little 
spirits dwelling in woods and wild places, while 
the polished stone axes were thunderbolts ! 

How all kinds of other myths, such as those 
accounting for the bear's stumpy tail, the robin's 
red breast, the crossbill's twisted bill, the aspen's 
quivering leaf, arose, I cannot now stay to 
tell you ; nor how out of myths there grew the 
nursery stories and fairy tales which children 
never tire of hearing : for we must now be 
starting on our voyage from the wonderful 
realm of fancy to the not less wonderful land 
of fact, whither science is ever bearing us. 
Nay, not less wonderful, but more wonderful ; 
since the fancies come from the facts, not the 
facts from the fancies. 



82 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii. 



XXIII. Man's Ideas about the Soul. 

We have learned, that, because man saw all 
nature to be in motion, he believed that life 
dwelt in all, — that a spirit moved leaf and cloud 
and beast. Words now come in to tell us 
what in the course of time was man's notion 
about a spirit. The difference between a living 
and a dead man is this : the living man breathes 
and moves ; the dead man has ceased to 
breathe, and is still. Now, the word spirit means 
breath ; and, in the leading languages of the world, 
the word used for sotd, or spirit, is that which 
signifies breath, or wind. Frequently the soul 
of man is thought to be a sort of steam or 
vapor, or a man's shadow, which, becoming 
unsettled, causes him to be ill. The savage 
thinks that the spirit can leave the body during 
sleep ; and so whatever happens to him in 
his dreams seems as real and true as if it had 
taken place while he was awake. If he sees 
some dead friend in his sleep, he believes either 
that the dead has come to him, or that his 



Sect, xxiii.] OF THE WORLD. 83 

spirit has been on a visit to his friend ; and he is 
very careful not to awake any one sleeping, lest 
the soul should happen to be away from the 
body. Believing that a man's soul could thus 
go in and out of his body, it was also thought 
that demons could be drawn in with the breath, 
and that yawning and sneezing were proofs of 
their nearness. So, what is called an invocation 
was spoken to ward them off; of which we have 
a trace in the custom of saying, " God bless 
you ! " when any one sneezes. 

According to an old Jewish legend, " The 
custom of saying, ' God bless you ! ' when a 
person sneezes dates from Jacob. The Rabbis 
say, that, before the time that Jacob lived, men 
sneezed once, and that was the end of them : 
the shock slew them. This law was set aside 
at the prayer of Jacob, on condition that in all 
nations a sneeze should be hallowed by the 
words, ' God bless you ! ' " 

Diseases were said to be caused, among other 
things, by the soul staying away too long from 
the body ; and the bringing of it back is a pait 
of the priest's or wizard's work. 



84 THE CHILDHOOD [Part a 

All these ideas, crude as they are, have lived 
on among people long after they have risen 
from savagery, and in fact remain among us, 
although their first meaning is hidden, in such 
sayings as a man being "out of his mind," or 
"beside himself," or "come to himself." If the 
body has suffered any loss in limb or otherwise, 
the soul is thought to be maimed too ; and 
the belief that it will need, after it leaves the 
body, all the things which it has had here, will 
explain the custom of killing wives and slaves 
to follow the deceased, and, as among very low 
races, lifeless things are said to have souls, of 
placing clothes, weapons, and ornaments in the 
grave for the dead person's use in another world. 
It is within a very few years that in Europe the 
soldier's horse that follows his dead master in 
the funeral procession was shot, and buried 
with him. 

Man regarding himself as surrounded by 
spirits, dwelling in every thing and all-powerful 
to do him good or harm, shaped his notions 
about them as they seemed to smile or frown 
upon him. 



Sect. xxiv.J OF THE WORLD. 85 

Not only did he look upon sickness as often 
the work of demon spirits, but, in his fear, he 
filled the darkness with ghosts of the dead 
rising from their graves, shrieking at his door, 
sitting in his house, tapping him on the shoulder, 
and breaking the silence with their whistling 
tones. 



XXIV. Belief in Magic and Witchcraft 

In the desire to ward off these unwelcome 
guests, man has made use of charms and magic 
arts and tricks of different sorts ; and there 
have always been those, who, shrewder than the 
rest, have traded on the fears of the weak and 
timid, and professed to have power over the spirits, 
or such influence with them as to drive them 
away by certain words or things, Medicme- 
men, rain-makers, wizards, conjurors, and sor- 
cerers, these have abounded everywhere ; and 
even among us now there are found, undei 
other names, people who think they have 
power with the unseen, and know more about 



86 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii. 

the unknown than has ever been or will be 
given to man to find out in this life. 

This belief in magical arts, which is so firmly 
rooted among the lowest tribes of mankind, 
has only within the last two hundred years died 
out among civilized people, and even lingers 
still in out-of-the-way places, among the foolish 
and ignorant, who are always ready to see a 
miracle in every thing that they cannot under- 
stand. Out of it grew the horrid belief in 
witchcraft, through which it is reckoned nine 
fnillions of people have been burned ! Witch- 
craft spread with a belief in the Devil ; who, being 
looked upon as the enemy of God and man, was 
regarded as the cause of all the evil in the world, 
which he worked, either by himself or by the 
aid of agents. It was held that persons had 
sold themselves to him ; he, in return, promising 
that they should lack nothing, and should have 
power to torment man and woman and child 
and beast. If any one, therefore, felt strange 
\)ains, — if any sad loss came, — it was the unholy 
work of witches. It was they who caused the 
withering storm, the ruin to the crops, the 



Sect, xxv.] OF THE WORLD. 87 

sudden death of the cattle ; and, when any one 
pined away in sickness, it was because some 
old witch had cast her evil eye upon him, or 
made a waxen image of him, and set it before 
the fire, that the sick man might waste away 
as it melted. The poor creatures who were 
charged • with thus being in league with the 
Devil were sought for among helpless old 
women. To have a wrinkled face, a hairy 
lip, a squint eye, a hobbling gait, a squeaking 
voice, a scolding tongue ; to live alone, — these 
were thought proofs enough, and to such 
miserable victims torture was applied so cruelly 
that death was a welcome release. 

XXV. Man's Awe of the Unknown. 

Since all that puzzles the savage puzzles us, 
we can feel with him VN/'hen he speaks of the 
soul as breath, of dreams as real, and, in hushed 
voice, of good and bad spirits around. 

To this day we have not, nor does it seem 
likely we ever can have, any clear idea about 
the soul. We have a vasfue notion, that at 



88 THE CHILDHOOD [Part il 

death it leaves the body as a sort of filmy 
thing or shadow or vapor. English, Chinese, 
and Indians alike will keep some door or 
window open through which the departing soul 
may leave ; and it is a German saying, that a 
door should not be slammed lest a soul be 
pinched in it ! 

And our dreams, which so many believe in 
as bringing faithful messages of joy and 
sorrow, seem to us so real and "true while 
they last." Even in the most foolish and 
baseless stories which are told about bells 
rung in haunted houses, and ghosts with 
sheeted arms in churchyards, there is, remem- 
ber, a witness to the avi^e in which man, both 
civilized and savage, in every age and place, 
holds the unseen. 

For all that science tells us about the crea- 
tures that teem in a drop of water, and in 
the little bodies that course with our blood, 
brings us no nearer the great mystery of life. 
The more powerful the microscopes we use, 
the more wonders — as we might rightly expect 
— do we see ; but life itself no glass will ever 



Sect, xxvi.] OF THE WORLD. gg 

show US, and the soul of man no finger will 
ever touch. 

God has given to man a mind, that is, power 
to think and reason and remem.ber, and with 
it time, place, and wish to use the gift. He, 
in the words of a great poet, "wraps man in 
darkness, and makes him ever long for light." 
As that which costs little is valued little, man 
would not have cared, had much knowledge 
been granted him at first, to strive after more ; 
but because he knows little, yet feels that 
he has the power to learn much, he uses the 
power in gaining increase of wisdom and 
knowledge, till he feels the truth of those very 
old words which say of wisdom, " She is more 
precious than rubies, and all the things thou 
canst desire are not to be compared unto her." 

XXVI. Fetish-Worship, 

So far, then, we have seen how man seeks 
to explain what he sees around him ; and the 
next thing we have to find out is. What is his 
first feeling towards it all .'' It is to Ibow before 

8* 



90 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii 

it, and worship the powers which seem stronger 
than himself. 

The very lowest form of worship is that 
paid to lifeless things, in which some virtue or 
charm is thought to dwell, and is called 
" fetish " worship, from a word meaning a cJiarm. 
It does not matter what the object is : it may 
be a stone of curious shape, the stump of a 
tree with the roots turned up, even an old hat 
or a red rag, so long as some good is supposed 
to be had, or some evil to be thwarted, through 
it. The worship of stones, about which we 
may read in the Bible, prevails to this day 
among rude tribes, who have the strangest 
notions about them, as being sometimes 
husbands and wives, sometimes the dwelling- 
place of spirits. The confused ideas which 
cause the savage to look upon dreams as real 
cause him to confound the lifeless with the 
living, and to carefully destroy the parings off 
his nails and cuttings of his hair, lest evil 
should be worked through them. The New 
Zealander would thrust pebbles down the throat 
of a male child to make its heart hard. The 



Sect, xxvi.] OF THE WORLD. 91 

Zula chews woods that the heart of his foe or 
of the woman whom he loves may soften 
towards him even as the wood is being bruised. 
The dreadful practice of men of eating human 
flesh is supposed to have arisen from the 
idea, that, if the flesh of some strong, brave 
man be eaten, it makes the eater strong and 
brave also. The natives of Borneo will not 
eat deer lest they should thereby become 
faint-hearted ; and the Malays will give much 
for the flesh of the tiger to make them brave. 
If a Tartar doctor has not the medicine which 
he wants he will write its name on a scrap 
of paper, and make a pill of it for the patient 
to take. A story is told of a man in Africa 
who was thought very holy, and who earned 
his living by writing prayers on a board, 
washing them off, and selling the water. 

We may laugh at this : but whenever we 
say a verse out of the Bible, or gabble over 
the beautiful Lord's Prayer, because we think, 
that, in some mysterious way, we get good 
by so doing, we are fetish-worshippers, and 
far below the poor savages I am telling you 



92 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii, 

about ; for we know, that, unless our hearts 
speak, no muttering of words can help us. 

XXVII. Idolatry. 

The customs of worshipping a fetish and of 
setting up an idol, although they may appear 
the same, are really very different; because, 
when an idol is made, it does not alv/ays follow 
that it is worshipped. The word " idol " comes 
from a Greek word meaning an image, or fovfn ; 
and sometimes the idol is treated as only an 
image of the god or gods believed in, and is 
not mistaken for the god itself Unhappily 
it has more frequently been regarded as a 
god, and believed to hear prayer, to accept 
gifts, and to have power to bless or curse. The 
materials out of which different races shape 
their gods show us what their ideas are. These 
may be mere bundles of grass or rudely 
daubed stones, or carved with the care and 
beauty displayed in the household idols of 
the East. If the god is believed in as all- 
powerful, a huge image will be built, to which 



Sect, xxviii.] OF THE WORLD. 5,3 

will be given a score of arms and legs, the 
head of a lion, the feet of a stag, and the 
wings of a bird. But it would fill a much 
larger book than this, were I to tell you how, 
in every age, different nations have made and 
worshipped idols, and what they have been 
like. Very many years will yet pass away 
before, even in civilized countries, people will 
learn that the great God has neither shape 
nor parts, and can never be looked upon ; 
" seeing," as the good apostle Paul told the 
Greeks, " that he is Lord of heaven and earth, 
and dwelleth not in temples made with hands," 
and therefore is not " like unto gold or silver 
or stone graven by art and man's device." 

XXVIII. Nature-Worship. 

We have now to leave the lifeless things 
in which poor savage man has found a god 
to hang round his neck, or set up in his hut, 
and learn a little about some of the living 
and moving things which are worshipped. 

Some learned men think that the worship 



94 THE CHILDHOOD [Part il 

of serpents and trees was the earliest faitb 
of mankind. Others have thought that the 
sun, moon, stars, and fire were first worshipped. 
But it seems more likely, that, in different 
parts of the world, men had different gods, 
and would at first worship the things nearest 
to them, till they knew enough about them 
to lessen fear, and would then bow before those 
greater powers whose mysteries are hidden irlill. 

I. Water- Worship. — The worship of water is 
very wide-spread, and easy to account for ; for 
what seemed so full of life, and therefore, ac- 
cording to early man's reason, so full of spirits, 
as rivers, brooks, and waterfalls ? To him it was 
the water-demon that made the river flow so fast 
as to be dangerous in crossing, and that curled 
the dreaded whirlpool in which life was sucked. 
When one river-god came to be afterwards 
believed in, as controlling every stream, making 
it to flow lazily along, or to rush at torrent- 
speed, it was believed to be wrong to save 
any drowning person lest the river-god should 
be cheated of his prey. 



Sect, xxviii.] OF THE WORLD. 95 

Sacred springs, holy wells, abound every- 
where, to show how deep and lasting was 
water-worship. You have heard of sacred 
rivers, such as the Ganges, of which some 
beautiful stories are given in the sacred books 
of India, telling how it flows from the heavenly 
places to bless the earth, and wash away all sin. 

2. Tree- Worship. — The worship of trees is 
also very common. The life, that, locked up 
within them during the long winter, burst out in 
leaf and flower and fruit, and seemed to moan or 
whisper as the breezes shook branch and leaf, was 
that not also the sign of an indwelling spirit } 

So, far later in time than the early nature- 
worshippers, the old Greeks thought when they 
peopled sea and stream, tree and hill, with 
beings whom they called nymphs, telling of 
the goddesses who dwelt in the water to bless 
the drinkers, and of those who were born and 
who died with the trees in which they lived. 
And you have perhaps heard that the priests 
of the ancient religion of this island held the 
oak-tree sacred, and lived among its groves, 



96 THE CHILDHOOD [Paat il 

as their name Druid, which comes from the 
Welsh word derw or the Greek drus, both 
meaning an oak^ shows. 

3. Animal- Worship. — Besides the worship of 
trees and rivers and other like things seen to 
have life or motion, the worship of animals arose 
in very early times. The life in them was seen 
to be very different from that of the tree or 
river. The water swirled and foamed, the tree 
shook, the volcano hissed ; but no eyes glistened 
from them, no huge claws sprang forth to tear ; 
and the brute seemed so like to man in many 
things, and withal was so much stronger, that it 
must have a soul greater than the soul of man. 

As mastery over the brute was gained, the 
fear and worship of it died out here and there ; 
but sacred animals play a great part in many 
religions. The kind of brute worshipped de- 
pended very much on the country in which 
man lived. In the far north, he worshipped 
the bear and wolf ; farther south, the lion and 
tiger and crocodile ; and, in very many parts of 
the world, the serpent. So cunning and subtle 



Sect, xxix.] OF THE WORLD. g-j 

seemed that long, writhing, brilliant-colored 
thing, so deadly was its poison-fang, so fasci- 
nating the glitter of the eye that looked out 
from its hateful face, that, for long centuries, 
it was feared, and became linked in the minds 
of men as the soul of that evil which early 
worked sorrow and shame among them. 

On this I cannot now dwell, but must go 
on to tell you that man's next step, rising 
from the worship of stones and brutes, was 
to believe in a class of great gods, each ruling 
some separate part of nature or of the life 
of men. 

XXIX. Polytheism, or Belief in Many 
Gods. 

Thus, instead of thinking only of a separate 
spirit as dwelling in every streamlet, he con- 
ceived of one river-god or water-god ruling 
all streams, or of one sea-god ruling every 
sea. I hope you are taking notice of the 
lesson this history has so far taught, that, the 
more man began to think and to know, the more 



c,8 THE CHILDHOOD [Part a 

did he lessen the number of his gods. Thus 
arose belief in one god ruling the thunder, 
another the rain, another the wind, another the 
sun, and so on. 

As the best way of making quite clear to you 
the growth of belief in these great controlling 
beings, I will try and explain to you how the 
worship of the sun and moon began. 

There is nothing that would excite man's 
wonder at first so much as the fact that day- 
light was not always with him ; that for a time 
he could see things around him, and then that 
the darkness crept over them, and caused him to 
grope along his path, or lie down to rest. 

Each morning, before the sun was seen, rays 
of light shot upward as if to herald his coming ; 
and then he arrived to flood the earth with 
more light, growing brighter and brighter till 
the eye could scarce look upon him, so dazzling 
was the glory. Then, as slowly, he sank again ; 
the light-rays lingering as they came, until they 
passed away altogether. 

About all the other gifts which the sun is 
made to shed upon this and other worlds, yo" 



Sect, xxix.] OF THE WORLD. c,^ 

may read in books on astronomy (su£h as Mr. 
Lockyer's lessons in that science) ; and from 
those you may learn true wonder-tales de- 
scribing how we are all what the Incas of 
South America were called, " children of the 
sun," — here I am dealing with the sun as an 
object of worship only. 

Welcome as was the light given by moon 
and far-off stars, it was less sure than the 
sun's ; and, although it relieved the gloom and 
darkness, could not chase night away. 

Therefore the natural feeling of man was 
to bow before this Lord of Light, and, in the 
earliest known form of adoration, kiss his hand 
to it, paying it the offering of sacrifice. There 
is an old story from some Jewish writings 
known as the Talmud, which describes very 
powerfully man's feeling concerning the dark- 
ness and the light. 

It relates, that, " when Adam and Eve wei'e 
driven out of the garden of Eden, they wandered 
over the face of the earth. And the sun iStegan 
to set ; and they looked with fear at the lessen- 
ing of the light, and felt a horror like death 



loo THE CHILDHOOD [Part il. 

Steal over their hearts. And the h'ght of 
heaven grew paler, and the wretched ones clasped 
one another in an agony of despair. Then 
all grew dark. And the luckless ones fell on 
the earth, silent, and thought that God had 
withdrawn from them the light forever ; and 
they spent the night in tears. But a beam of 
light began to rise over the eastern hills, after 
many hours of darkness ; and the golden sun 
came back, and dried the tears of Adam and 
Eve ; and then they cried out with joy, and 
said, ' Heaviness may endure for a night, but 
joy Cometh in the morning : this is a law that 
God hath laid upon nature.' " 

The worship of the heavenly bodies is not 
only very wide-spread, but continued to a late 
age among the great nations of the past, as 
the names of their gods and the remains of 
their temples prove. In this island pillars were 
once raised to the sun, and altars to the moon 
and the earth-goddess ; while the story of early 
belief is preserved in the names given to some 
of the days of the week, as Sun-day, Mon- or 
Moon-day. 



Sect, xxix.] OF THE WORLD. xo\ 

Days were the most ancient division of time ; 
and, as the changes of the moon began to be 
watched, they marked the weeks, four weeks 
roughly making up the month which was seen 
to elapse between every new moon. To distin- 
guish one day from another, names were given ; 
and, as it was a belief that each of the seven 
planets presided over a portion of the day, their 
names were applied to the seven days of the 
week. 

Our forefathers, however, consecrated the days 
of the week to their seven chief gods. Sunday 
and Monday to the sun and moon, as already 
stated ; Tuesday to Tuisco (which name, strange 
as it may seem, comes from the same word- 
root as Deity), father of gods and men ; 
Wednesday to Woden, or Odin, one-eyed ruler 
of heaven, and god of war ; Thursday to Thor, 
the god of thunder ; Friday to Friga, Woden's 
wife ; Saturday either to Seater, a Saxon god, 
or to Saturn. We use the name for each 
month of the year which the Romans gave ; 
but the Saxon names were very different, — 
January being called the wolf-monai, or wolf- 



I02 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii 

month ; March the letiet-monat, because the days 
were seen to lengthen; and so on. 

I should tell you that there are countries 
where, because the heat of the sun is so fierce 
as to scorch and wither plants and often cause 
death to man, he is not worshipped as the 
giver of the blessed light, but feared as an evil, 
malicious god. 

The worship of fire is usually found joined to 
that of sun, moon, and stars. Fire gives light 
and warmth : it seems, in its wonderful power, 
to lick up all that is heaped upon it, like some 
hungry, never-satisfied demon, and is nearest 
of any thing on earth to the great fire-bodies in 
the sky. 

XXX. Dualism, or Belief in Two Gods. 

Man, as he came to think more and more 
about things, and not to be simply frightened 
into an unreasoning worship of living and dead 
objects, lessened still further the number of 
ruling powers, and seemed to see two mighty 
gods, fighting for mastery over himself and the 
universe. 



Sect, xxx.] OF THE WORLD. 103 

On the one hand was a power that appeared 
to dwell in the calm, unclouded blue, and with 
kind and loving heart to scatter welcome gifts 
upon men ; on the other hand was a power 
that appeared to be harsh and cruel, that 
lashed the sea into fury, covered earth and 
sky with blackness, sv/ept man's home and 
crops away in torrent and in tempest, chilled 
him with icy hand, and gave his children to 
the beast of prey. One a god of light, smiling 
in the sunbeam ; the other a god of darkness, 
scowling in the thundercloud ; one ruling by 
good and gentle spirits, the other by fierce and 
evil spirits. 

This belief in a good god opposed and fought 
against by a bad god became so deeply rooted, 
that no religion is quite free from it; for it 
seemed to man the only explanation of the hurt 
and evil whose power he felt. 

But it is not true that the almighty God in 
whom we are taught to believe is checked anil 
hindered by another power. If he were, he 
would cease to be all-mighty ; and we should 
have to pray to the evil power, and beseech him 
taot to hurt us. 



I04 "^'HE CHILDHOOD [Part ii. 

The sin which is in the world, and about 
which your own heart tells you, has its birth 
in the will of man, which God in his sovereign 
wisdom has created free. Instead of making us 
as mere machines that cannot go wrong, he has 
given us the awful power of doing either good 
or evil, and thus of showing our love to him by 
choosing what he loves, and doing the things 
that are pleasing in his sight. However anx- 
ious we may be, as man has so often been, to 
cast the blame of wrong-doing on another, the 
sins which we commit are our own wilful work. 
This we know to be true ; because it is declared 
by that voice within each of us, which does 
not lie, and which is the voice of the holy God. 

If we have power to break God's command- 
ments, but not power to keep them, or if some 
unseen force, stronger than ourselves, is allowed 
to drive us into evil, we could not have that 
sense of guilt which ever follows sinning, be- 
cause we should feel that the fa ult was not all 
our own, and that we should be wronged in 
being punished for what we could not help. 
Then that saddest of all states — distrust of 



Sect, xxxi.] OF THE WORLD. 105 

God, distrust of his voice within ■— would be 
ours. 

But, leaving this matter for a while, I have 
hitherto said little about the way in which man 
would seek to express his feelings towards the 
gods in which he believed, be they few or many, 
good or bad. One way was by praying to them, 
another way by offering sacrifice to them. 

XXXI. Prayer. 

To cry for help when we are in danger is our 
first act ; to ask for what we want from those 
who seem able and willing to give it is both 
natural and right. Thus man prayed to his 
gods, and prays still ; for, to the end of time, the 
deep, long cry of mankind to Heaven will con- 
tinue. And rude and hideous as may be the 
idol to which the poor savage tells his story of 
need or sorrow, we must, remember, stand in 
awe as we think of the soul within him that 
hungers for its food, even as the body hungers, 
and that yearns after the unseen God whom 
we call our Father in heaven. Of course he 



io6 THE CHILDHOOD [Part n. 

prays in his ignorance for many weak and 
foolish things, to grant which would be really 
hurtful to him. In this he is like children who 
ask their parents for something which those 
parents know is not good for them, and who 
think themselves badly treated because they are 
denied it. 

As man gets more thoughtful and trustful, 
he prays for better gifts than the things which 
perish, and, telling his wants and troubles to the 
All-wise Being, leaves it to him to send what- 
ever he may choose. 

" In His decision rest, 
Secure whate'er He gives, He gives the best." 



XXXII. Sacrifice. 

The reason for offering sacrifices is explained 
by man's dealings with his fellow-man. 

When we feel that we have vexed our friends, 
or that for some cause they are angry with us, 
our first desire is to remove the anger by an 
offering of some kind ; while towards those 



Sect, xxxii.] OF THE WORLD. 107 

whom we love and feel grateful for their kind- 
ness, we show our love and thanks by gifts. 

In this way, sacrifices or offerings to idols, 
and to the seen and unseen powers of good and 
evil, began, and have continued in different 
forms among all nations to the present day : 
one sacrifice being offered from a feeling of 
thanksgiving, another as a bribe to quiet or 
appease the gods thought to be angry, and 
who, being looked upon very often as big men, 
were supposed to be humored like cross and 
sulky people. 

Of course men would offer the best of what 
they had, and would pick the finest fruits and 
flowers, as gifts to the gods, or burn upon a 
raised pile of stones called an altar the most 
spotless of their flocks. And because the 
surrender of the nearest and dearest was often 
thought necessary to allay the anger, or secure 
the help, or ward off the vengeance, of the god, 
the lives of dear ones were offered ; and this is 
one of the chief causes of the hideous and horrid 
rites which curdle one's blood to think about, 
and of which every land and every age have 
been the spectators. 



io8 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ir. 

The blessed Father of all "is not a God of 
the dead, but of the living," and a Being who 
therefore loves not the sacrifice of blood and 
death. The sacrifice which is sweet to him is 
that of hearts, which, sorrowful for their sins, 
and for grieving him by wandering from his 
fatherly arras, are willing to give up their wrong- 
doings, and, casting out selfishness, in which 
so much evil lurks, to do his will on earth as it 
is done in heaven. Men are only now slowly 
learning this great truth, although many centu- 
ries have passed away since it was first taught, 
because they have found it easier to profess cer- 
tain beliefs, or pay others to perform certain rites 
for them, than to strive day by day to obey the 
commandments of God. 

XXXIII. Monotheism, or Belief in One 
God. 

Coming much nearer the time when the 
history of man's religious belief grows clearer, 
we see that his ideas had become higher and 
nobler. 



Sect, xxxiii.] OF THE WORLD. 109 

It had at first seemed to hira as if in heaven 
above and earth beneath nought but confusion 
reigned ; but, as the course of things became 
more carefully watched, it was seen that order, 
not disorder, plan, not blind fate, ruled the 
universe. 

The storm which made havoc with the fruit 
of man's industry swept disease and foul air 
away ; the fire, that, uncontrolled, destroyed, was, 
when controlled, man's useful servant ; the night 
that filled the air with bad spirits lulled man 
to welcome rest ; the things which had been 
looked upon as curses turned out to be blessings ; 
and much that seemed discord in nature was 
harmony to him who touched the chords aright. 

Man had at first worshipped that which was 
strongest, and feared that which seemed like- 
liest to harm him most; but, as he grew in 
knowledge and wisdom, he came to worship 
that which was best. This arose from the 
feeling, which I have just described, that some- 
thing else than crushing force was over all. 
We have seen, that, on man's first entrance into 

life, he found it one continued battle againsi 
10 



ixo THE CHILDHOOD [i'ART ii. 

forces of all kinds ; and the only law that ruled 
was the law of might. He who could get a 
thing, and keep it, was entitled to it. Besides 
ability to defend himself by sheer force or 
cunning, man possessed the power of injuring, 
and of doing wanton cruelty and mischief for 
its ov- li sake ; and of this power all history 
shows us he made sad use. Lower in this than 
the beast which slays to satisfy its hunger, man 
killed his fellow-men to satisfy his lawless am- 
bition, and committed ravages which centuries 
of labor have been unable to repair. But, as 
the human family increased, it became clear 
that there would soon be an end to every thing, 
did man continue using to the full this power to 
hurt and plunder and kill. Therefore, to enable 
mankind to live together in peace, and to pro- 
gress, it was needful for them to feel that respect 
was due to the rights of others, and that it was 
necessary to do to them as they would wish to 
be done unto. If a man refused to agree to 
this, and in malice injured another, he was 
punished for breaking the rules which must be 
kept to make what is called society possible. 



SEcr. XXXIII.] OF THE WORLD. m 

But, besides the sense of duty towards others, 
there was another and a deeper sense by which 
man felt that it was wrong to injure them. 

There is something within every one, when 
called upon to choose between a better and 
a worse, which speaks in clear and certain tones. 

If we are tempted to do wrong, yet know 
to do right, from whence comes the knowledge .'* 
If after each act of kindness, each duty faith- 
fully done, there follows a blessed peace, from 
whence does it spring "i Sun and moon cannot 
be spoken of as knowing right from wrong, or as 
helping us to discern the difference. The stars 
of heaven and the stones of earth know nothing 
about duties, and are moved or kept still by 
other laws than the law of love. 

God is its source, and none other but he. 

" His gentle voice we liear, 
Soft as the breath of even, 
That checks each fault, that calnas each fear, 
And speaks forgiven." 

Never, I beseech you, stifle conscience ; for 
when it speaks, you are in the path of danger; 



112 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii. 

only when you are safe is it silent, yet none the 
less watchful, unsleeping. Never, I beseech you, 
try to displace that judge who never leaves his 
seat, but sits, moment by moment, weighing 
every thought and act in his balance. 

For that which we feel and know to be the 
highest law within us must, we rightly argue, 
dwell in perfection in Him whose authority 
thus makes itself heard by us ; and since God's 
laws are the creatures of his love, it follows that 
to obey them is to dwell in love, and therefore 
to dwell in God. 

So man, footsore and toilworn, came at last 
to rest in this, and to believe in one God and 
Father of all, "Maker of heaven and earth, 
and of all things visible and invisible," and to 
believe, that "to love him with all the heart 
is more than all whole burnt-offerings and 
sacrifices." 

In some such way as I have tried to show 
you did man arrive at this sublimest of all 
beliefs. But only a few out of the large human 
family are thus blessed : the greater number 
still worship gods many, — gods good, bad, and 
indifferent. 



Sec-i. xxxiii.] of the WORLD. 113 

Even where a belief in one God has been 
reached, he has at first been shaped in the 
mind after the fashion of a man. To the people 
dwelling in the cold, bleak north, he was the 
Thunderer ; to the people dwelling farther 
south, on the coast that bordered quiet waters 
and under sunny skies, he was the Beautiful ; 
to the dweller in the plain, strong in soul and 
rough in dealing, he was a power walking on the 
wings of the wind, a being with the feelings and 
passions of a man. 

It needed great teachers, who walked amidst 
the groves of beautiful Athens, and a greater 
still, who sat, wearied, by a well in Samaria, to 
convey ideas of God w^hich cannot be surpassed. 

And yet history tells us that in this, as in 
other things, nations have fallen back. They 
have forgotten God, as the Children of Israel did 
when, after receiving his commandment to wor- 
ship no graven image, they shaped an idol like 
the sacred bull of the Egypt they had left. 

Just as there are savage races still in tha^ 

Stone Age which I have shown you was the 
10* 



114 "^^^ CHILDHOOD [Part ii 

beginning of progress, and which Europe has 
left thousands of years beliind, so there are to 
be found races that have not risen above the 
lowest ideas about spirits in lifeless things. 
They show iis what we were : we represent what, 
it is hoped, they may become. In believing this 
we gain trust, that, since God has made nothing 
in vain, he will give to the poor and wild and 
ignorant to know in the hereafter, what; through 
no fault of theirs, has been hidden from them 
here. 

XXXIV. Three Stories about Abraham. 

Since the highest belief of any time is the 
belief of its highest minds, it is clear, that, in 
every age, there have been men more far-seeing 
and thoughtful than their fellow-men, who, feel- 
ing that this great, solemn life is given us for 
something nobler than eating and money-getting, 
asked themselves why they were at all, whither 
they were going, and from whence came what 
they saw around them. Of the holy lives with 
which such men enriched the earth, and of the 



Sect, xxxiv.l OF THE WORLD. 115 

wise and beautiful thoughts in which they have 
recorded their search after truth, which is but 
another name for search after God, you will learn 
by and by ; but I want to redeem my promise, 
and tell you a little about one of these men, 
earliest in historic time, who is thought to have 
laid hold of and given to us through others a 
belief in the One God, 

Abraham, for he it is whom I mean, was a 
native of the country called Chaldea. The clear 
sky of that Eastern land invited the people 
dwelling in it to the charmful study of the sun, 
moon, and stars ; and they not only worshipped 
these bodies, but sought to foretell the fate of 
men from them. An ancient historian tells 
us that every Chaldean had a signet and staff, 
bearing the sign of the planet or stars that were 
seen at his birth. Some have said that Ur, the 
city where Abraham was born, was a chief seat 
of sun-worship, and that its name means light, 
or fire. We may safely say that Abraham's 
early years were spent among sun-worshippers ; 
and it may interest you to know that his name 
and memory are held in high honor, not only 



Ii6 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii 

by the Jews, but also by the Persians and Mo- 
hammedans. 

Among the stories about him which are 
preserved in certain ancient books are the 
following : — 

Terah, the father of Abraham, was a maker 
and dealer in idols. Being obliged to go from 
home one day, he left Abraham in charge. An 
old man came in, and asked the price of one 
of the idols. '' Old man," said Abraham, " how 
old art thou t " — " Threescore years," answered 
the old man. " Threescore years ! " said 
Abraham ; " and thou wouldest worship a thing 
that my father's slaves made in a few hours .-* 
Strange that a man of sixty should bow his 
gray head to a creature such as that ! The 
man crimsoned with shame, turned away ; and 
then came a grave-looking woman to bring an 
offering to the gods. " Give it them thyself," 
said Abraham : " thou wilt see how greedily 
they will eat it." She did so. Abraham then 
took a hammer, and broke all the idols except 
the largest, in whose hands he placed the 
hammer. When Terah returned, he asked 



Sect. XXXIV.] OF THE WORLD. n^ 

angrily what profane wretch had dared thus 
to abuse the gods. "Why," said Abraham. 
" during thine absence a woman brought yonder 
food to the gods, and the younger ones began 
to eat. The old god, enraged at their boldness, 
took the hammer and smashed them." — " Dost 
thou mock thy aged father } " said Terah : " do 
I not know that they can neither eat nor 
move .-* " — " And yet," said Abraham, " thou wor- 
shippest them, and wouldest have me worship 
them too." The story adds that Terah, in his 
rage, sent Abraham to be judged for his crime 
by the king. 

Nimrod asked Abraham : " You will not 
adore the idols of your father, then pray to 
fire." 

Abraham : Why may I not pray to water, 
which will quench fire } 

Nimrod : Be it so : pray to water. 

Abraham : But why not to the clouds, which 
hold the water } 

Nimrod: Well, then, pray to the clouds. 

Abraham : Why not to the wind, which drives 
the clouds before it .-• 



Ii8 THE CHILDHOOD [Part n. 

Nimrod : Then pray to the wind. 

Abraham : Be not angry, O King ! I can- 
not pray to the fire or the water or the clouds or 
the wind, but to the Creator who made them : 
him only will I worship. 

On another occasion, "Abraham left a cave 
in which he had dwelt, and stood on the face 
of the desert. And when he saw the sun 
shining in all its glory, he was filled with 
wonder ; and he thought, ' Surely the sun is 
God the Creator ; ' and he knelt down, and 
worshipped the sun. But, when evening came, 
the sun went down in the west ; and Abraham 
said, ' No : the Author of creation cannot set.' 
Now the moon arose in the east, and the stars 
looked out of the sky. Then said Abraham, 
'This moon must indeed be God, and all the 
stars are his host' And, kneeling down, he 
adored the moon. But the moon set also, and 
from the east appeared once more the sun's 
bright face. Then said Abraham, ' Verily these 
heavenly bodies are no gods, for they obey 
law : I will worship Him whose laws they 
obey.'" 



Sect. XXXV.] OF THE WORLD. n^ 



XXXV. Man's Belief in a Future Life 

The rude belief about spirits and dreams, 
ani the customs observed at burials, show us, 
that, however shapeless man's idea of another 
life may be, he has, from the earliest times, 
believed that the spirit, or breath, the ghost 
(which comes from the same root as gust), 
departs to dwell elsewhere when the body is 
cold and still in death. The highest and lowest 
races of men have tried to form some notion of 
what that blessed state is like, where happiness 
is given to the good, where friends, "loved long 
since and lost a while," will, with smiling angel- 
faces, welcome us ; or what that dark state 
may be where misery and wanhope (despair) 
dwell. 

Man, in wondering what becomes of the 
spirit, has thought that it haunted the place 
where it once lived, or that it passed into some 
other body, perhaps into some animal, and then 
into higher and higher forms, until it reached 
the dwelling-place of the gods. 



120 THE CHILDHOOD [Part n. 

He has placed his heaven in some, far-off 
Island of the Blest, or in some sunny land, — - 

" Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns 
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea ; " 

or in the west where the sun sets ; or in the 
sun, moon, and stars themselves. The pictures 
of it have been copied from the earth ; and 
all that he loves here, whether chaste or coarse, 
he hopes to have in larger measure there, even 
as he wishes to shut out from thence all that he 
dreads now. 

The best and brightest view of heaven is, 
leaving the rude idea of the savage far behind, 
to behold in every place on earth a fit spot 
whereon to kneel, to feel the sacredness of 
duty ; and then we shall believe that all which 
we here know to be highest and noblest and 
best shall be ours in heaven, wherever that 
heaven may be. The thought that God's worlds 
are thus linked together is very beautifully 
touched upon in one of the old Persian sacred 
books. The soul of a good man is pictured 
as being met in the other world by a lovely 



Sect, xxxv.] OF THE WORLD. 121 

maiden, " noble, with brilliant face, one of fifteen 
years, as fair in her growth as the fairest crea- 
tures. Then to her speaks the soul of the pure 
man, asking, * What maiden art thou whom I 
have seen here as the fairest of maidens in 
body ? ' She answers, ' I am, O youth, thy good 
thoughts, words, and works, thy good law, the 
own law of thine own body. Thou hast made 
the pleasant yet pleasanter to me, the fair yet 
fairer.' " * 

And since all of us like to read hymns about 
heaven, here is ,one which I expect you have 
never seen before. It was written thousands 
of years ago by some great-souled Aryan, and 
is full of music that cannot die away : — 

" Where there is eternal Hght, in the world where the 
sun is placed, in that immortal, imperishable world, place 
me, O Soma ! 

" Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place 
of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make 
me immortal ! 

"Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, 
the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal ! 

* The whole of this beautiful story is given by Mr. Tylor in his ''Primi- 
tive Culture." vol ii. p. go; a work to which I am much indebted, and whicb 
should receive careful attentioc from every thoughtful person. 

11 



122 THE CHILDHOOD [Part w. 

"Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the 
bright sun is, where there is freedom and dehght, there 
make me immortal ! 

"Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and 
pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire is attained, 
there make me immortal ! " 



XXXVI. Sacred Books. 

If this book has taught you nothing else, 
I hope it has taught you that the different 
behefs of mankind about God are worthy of 
attention. 

Few of us will live here for more than sixty 
or seventy years ; and, when we take off the 
time needed for eating and working and sleep- 
ing, there is not so very much left wherein to 
learn a little about the world in which we are 
sent to dwell. We do wisely to use some spare 
moments in asking how other eyes have looked 
upon the beauty and the mystery around, and 
what it has said to their hearts. 

It is not so very long ago that good meaning 
men looked upon the various religions of the 
world as almost beneath notice, or, if studied 
at all, studied as proofs of man's hatred to the 



Sect. XXXV-.] OF THE WORLD. 123 

good and the true. But wiser and mcire thought- 
ful men felt that we ought to try and understand 
them, and see what kind of answers others have 
given to the questions about God, and the wide 
universe, and life and death, which we all ask. 
These answers may be feeble and dim ; but, 
since they are the best that could be had, they 
demand our respect. We do not make our own 
religion more true by calling other religions 
false, nor do we make it worth less to us by 
admitting the good that may be in them. And 
the lesson which even a slight knowledge of the 
sacred books of other faiths — some older than 
our own, and still believed in by hundreds of 
millions of mankind — teaches, is, that God has 
never been without a witness among them. 
These sacred books, which they look upon as 
his word to them, are as dear to them as our 
Bible is dear to us. In them are the precepts 
which they have been taught to obey, the 
prayers and hymns which have the full rich 
meaning age alone can give, and which no new 
words could bring. It is true that these books 
contain many silly stories, myths, legends^ 



124 "^^^ CHILDHOOD [Part n. 

coarse ideas about God ; but from these no 
ancient book is free, and the errors that they 
contain do not make less true whatever of truth 
they hold. A diamond is not less a diamond 
because we pick it out of a dust-heap. 

Any account which I might give you of the 
different sacred writings would be chiefly a list 
of very long names ; and it is better that I 
should prove the truth of what has been said 
by quoting some hymns and prayers from them. 

The hymn about heaven comes from the 
very old sacred book of the Brahmins ; here is 
part of another hymn from the same : — 

" In the beginning there arose the source of golden 
light. 

" He was the only born Lord of all that is. 

" He stablished the earth and this sky. Who is the 
God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

" He who gives life, He who gives strength ; whose 
blessing all the bright gods desire ; whose shadow is im- 
mortahty : whose shadow is death. 

"Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice .'' 

" He who through his power is the only King of the 
breathing and awakening world; he whose power these 
snowy mountains and the sea and distant river proclaim. 

"He through whom the heaven was established, nay, 
the highest heaven ; He who measured out the light in 
the air." . , . 



Sect, xxxvi.] OF THE WORLD. 125 

This hymn-prayer is from the same book. 
Varuna, the god addressed, was one of their 
chief gods, and means *' The Surrounder : " — 

" Let me not yet, O Viruna ! enter into the house of 
clay. Have mercy, Ahnighty, have mercy ! 

" Through want of strength, have I done wrong. Have 
mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! 

" Whenever we men, O Varuna ! commit an offence 
before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law 
through thoughtlessness, have mercy. Almighty, have 
mercy ! " 

Here are some precepts from one of the 
sacred books of the Buddhists, which would 
find a fit place in our own beautiful Book of 
Proverbs : — 

" Conquer anger by mildness, evil by good, falsehood 
by truth. 

"Be not desirous of discovering the faults of others, 
but zealously guard against your own. 

" He is a more noble warrior who subdues himself, than 
he who in battle conquers thousands. (Compare with 
this Proverbs xvi. 32.) 

"To the virtuous all is pure. Therefore think not 
that going unclothed, fasting, or lying on the ground, can 
make the impure pure, for the mind will sti] remain the 
same." 

11* 



126 THE CHILDHOOD [Part ii. 

I believe that Jesus Christ would say to 
every Brahmin and Buddhist who strove to 
obey these precepts the words which fell cheer- 
ingly upon the Jewish lawyer's ear : " Thou art 
not far from the kingdom of God." 

XXXVII. Conclusion. 

Histories are often so made up of dates, 
giving the years when kings began to reign, 
when they died, and when famous battles were 
fought, that I dare say this early history of 
man, which has scarcely a date in it, seems a 
rather vague and confused story. 

But we have been travelling through ages so 
vast, that I might have confused you still more 
if I had spoken of years the number of which 
none of us can grasp, and put down guess-work 
figures with long rov/s of ciphers after them. 

It is through that twilight time of which I told 
you in the first pages of this little book that I 
have sought to take you. I have guessed as 
little as possible, and brought common sense to 
interpret the story which bones, flint knives, 



Sect. XXXVII.] OF THE WORLD. 127 

metal weapons, picture-writings, words, and 
other things, contain ; seeing in it a tale of 
progress, slow but sure, which began at the 
beginning of time, and will go on until time 
shall cease to be. 

I wish I could have made that story appear 
as beautiful and fascinating to you as it is to 
myself; but I thought it better told even 
roughly than not told at all. 

The facts of science are not, as some think, 
dry, lifeless things. They are living things, 
filling with sweetest poetry the ear that listens 
to them, and with fadeless harmony of colors 
the eye that looks upon them. 

They cot only give us these higher pleasures 
which endure, but they bring daily bread and 
health and comfort to thousands, who but for 
knowledge of them would have lived pitiful lives. 

I am offering you good counsel in advising 
you to use a certain portion of your time in 
studying one branch of science. It matters 
not which you choose, so far as wonder, beauty, 
and truth are concerned ; for astronomy, botany, 
chemistry, geology, alike possess these in such 



128 CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 

abundance, that life will be too short to exhaust 
them. 

With the mind thus stored, many an hour, 
otherwise dull, will be "filled with music;" 
many a star-lit night, otherwise unheeded, will 
shine with familiar lights ; many a landscape, 
bald and ugly to the unseeing eye, marked with 
lines of beauty traced by its Maker's hand. 
And if God, as I think this story shows, has 
chosen that man's progress shall largely depend 
upon himself, how careful should we be to do 
nothing that will be a hinderance. Our knowl- 
edge is no blessing to us, unless we have 
learned to use it well and wisely, and learned, 
too, that with it only, life is not complete. If, 
dealing with the " things we see," it walk hand 
in hand with faith in the unseen, these two 
shall make hfe beautiful and blessed. 

"God gives thee youth but once. Keep thou 
The childlike heart that will his kingdom be j 

The soul pure-eyed, that, wisdom-led, e'en now 
His blessed face shall see." 



